9 Key Events That Shaped Stirling: Part 2 The Burgh and Beyond (Part A….The Burgh to the Stewarts).
Guest blog post by Dr Murray Cook, Archaeologist
As part of the Stirling 900 celebrations for my personal selection of the 9 events that shaped Stirling before the burgh and then a further 9 events that shaped the burgh. This is the second part but I’m afraid it was all too big so am having to split the second blog into two parts (A and B).
1 The Creation of the Royal Burgh of Stirling
The creation of Stirling as a Royal Burgh around 1124 by David I is not really something we understand. Scotland (or Alba as it was at the time) was located north of the Forth, south of the Forth were two independent kingdoms: Strathclyde and Northumbria. The portions of both kingdoms in what is now Scotland (Strathclyde, Dumfries and Galloway, the Lothians and the Borders) gradually came under Scottish influence during David’s dad Malcolm III’s reign. No one expected Malcolm’s youngest son to ever become king as he had had eight older brothers and an uncle all of whom were ahead of him in the succession and indeed four of them became King of Scots. So he was given, with the agreement of the English a semi-independent area to rule and was called the Prince of Cumbrians (the old Strathclyde kingdom). This deal was probably brokered by one of his elder brothers Edgar or Alexander. But when they both died without legitimate heirs David inherited, this was a bit like one of Harry’s kid’s getting the British throne.
This of course meant that David now controlled Alba and his own territory and that the border shifted from the Forth to the Tweed. Three separate kingdoms with three separate sets of laws and languages. To keep control of these new territories David began to invest: abbeys and castle were built across Scotland and he also created a new legal entity the Burgh the first four of which were in the south: Stirling, Edinburgh, Berwick and Roxburgh. These were places were the locals could create a monopoly and charge people from outwith the burgh a fee to sell their goods in the Burgh…the king of course got a slice of the action! There was likely something at Stirling before but it was a frontier location and its economy boomed once it was no longer on Scotland’s edge.
In Stirling David would establish Cambuskenneth Abbey, The Royal Forest, The Church of the Holy Rude, The High School and probably the first bridge over the Forth. All of these key institutions are linked on the Burgh seal. But and its a very big but Stirling didn’t yet think it was really Scottish, indeed this was why Scotland’s first national assizes were established at Stirling Bridge because it was the key location between the different Scotlands. The reason we know this is that the latin inscription round the side of the seal talks of either ‘Britons and Scots’ or ‘brute Scots’….ie people in Stirling were something different…perhaps even better?
2 The Creation of the Royal Parks
Stirling’s King’s Knot: the finest lost garden in Scotland and the last major Royal investment in the King’s Park, built for Charles I’s coronation on top of an older feature called the Round Table, linking Stirling to Arthurian myth!
One of the amazing things about Stirling is just how green and wild our beautiful city is. From my garden I have seen sparrow hawks and buzzards, I’ve startled deer just up from Waitrose and seen red squirrels in Bridge of Allan. I even saw an otter in Dobbies once, though I wasn’t sure if it was there for the plants or the cafe.
Much of this green space derives from Stirling’s two Royal Parks: the New Park and the Old Park. The Old Park is the bigger of the two and also the oldest and best preserved in Scotland. It lies around the castle and was established by William I in the 12th century AD. The New Park, which lies around St Ninians, was established by Alexander III the 13th century AD and featured in the Battle of Bannockburn before being abandoned in the 14th and 15th centuries AD.
Royal parks were a mixture of gardens, park, farm and estate. They were to feed and entertain the Royal family. Stirling’s Old Park featured a golf course used by James IV, a fish pond, jousting grounds, an orchard, archery butts, deer dykes and formal gardens. It underwent a radical change around AD 1500 when James IV swapped the residential area, now called King’s Park, for Gowan Hill as improvements in artillery meant that cannons could now fire upon Stirling Bridge, so it made sense to make the hill a military zone. He combined this with a new bridge (the current old bridge) which had two gates and two sentry posts. It was the biggest bridge in Scotland and is still its best preserved medieval bridge.
After the Union of the Crowns in the 17th century, less and less was invested in the park and it was given over to agriculture. Today, the park is split between housing, a modern golf course and a play park but lots of the original features are still visible. You can see the fish pond used to feed Mary Queen of Scots, James IV’s orchard, the jousting ground where James IV and V hosted international competitions and, most amazing of all: the King’s Knot – the finest 17th century garden in Scotland, built to celebrate the coronation of Charles I (he’s the one who had his head chopped off by Cromwell!).
The Old Park is divided into two main zones: a southern portion and a northern portion (Gowan Hill). The southern portion is divided in two by the main road from the west into Stirling. The southern most portion of the Old Park features Stirling Golf Club and has an excellent series of paths around it. On the south-western fringe of the Park, the path splits in two either side of very steep crags; the one following the boundary runs below the crags and takes you to The Homesteads, while the one above the crags, is circular and takes you to and from the golf clubhouse.
Immediately to the south of Stirling Golf Club’s clubhouse lies a sunken hollow which, much to the irritation of the golfers, fills with water each winter and stops play! This is the Park Loch, the earliest record of which dates to at least 1434 AD. It’s fed from natural run off from higher ground to the west and covers between 4-6.5 acres. During the reigns of James IV and V it was stocked with trout, pike and perch, as well as ornamental swans and herons. However, we don’t know whether Mary Queen of Scots liked her fish fried or poached! The loch was still being maintained as late as 1625 but was not recorded in the 1750s. The water used to flow from the pond along Dumbarton Road, through the City Gate to feed the Town Mill Pond. In 1654, this caused a flood and damaged the city gate.
The loch is entirely artificial and the path which runs over its eastern side is a 19th century race track built over the loch’s dam. Looking at the pond, you can see signs of later rig and furrow cultivation dating from the late 17th or early 18th century when the loch had been infilled. The southern end of the pond was used in the 19th century as a sand quarry and latterly for a dump of military surplus in WWI!
3 The Wars of Independence
The Battle of Stirling Bridge 1297
Where to begin with the Wars of Independence? A series of conflicts that ran from 1296 to 1357, that defined Scotland and its borders and secured our liberty. I have written before about Stirling Castle during the wars…it was the most besieged of any castle during the conflict. The Wars of Independence gave us Scotland‘s two most important and famous military heroes: Wallace and Bruce and without them there would be no Scotland let alone a Stirling. I have written about Bruce our greatest warrior King before, but I don’t think we can ever hear enough about Wallace, surely the greatest ever Scot?
Wallace and Bruce’s stories have been coloured by history, legend and propaganda and they were not necessarily who we think they are. Bruce, his family and followers were in charge of the Scottish Government’s record and were clearly shamed by Wallace’s example. The official epic poetical account of the Wars of Independence, John Barbour’s The Brus, contains absolutely no reference to Wallace. Bruce was also very keen to get copies of his pledge of allegiance to Edward I and the acquisition of these was a key demand of the peace treaty of 1328. Despite all of this, Wallace’s legend shines bright.
So our current perception of Wallace is a giant beast of a man, hairy and uneducated, with a fierce burning patriotism, who rose from nothing to legendary status. Mel Gibson looms large of course, though he’s much too small and certainly too old. The English records describe Wallace as a brigand and a bandit. Certainly, Blind Harry’s Wallace portrays him as a one-man killing machine, famously after the ‘murder’ of his fictional wife, he vows to create:
…rivers of floating blood, and hills of slain,
But steel’d with rage, to slaughter let us fly,
And for her sake there shall ten thousand die.
This reputation and Edward I’s fierce personal hatred resulted in him being one of the few people being excluded from Edward I’s peace treaty. Our impression of Wallace is the archetypal Hollywood hero, a quiet man who wishes to be left alone, but is forced into action by bullies and achieves incredible things, he is Jack Reacher, Shane, or any of the characters played by John Wayne and Clint Eastwood all rolled into one, but he is also Cincinnatus, Bonhoeffer, Churchill, Vercingetorix, Washington, Atticus Finch and Nelson Mandela.
But how much of any of this is true? He was a younger son of a minor landed family, he was likely clean shaven, educated and with little or no military training and certainly no experience of command. He wasn’t a military genius (as his defeat at Falkirk demonstrates), he was however, a patriot. He was also clearly an exceptional and inspirational leader and while he wanted promotion and advancement and indeed rose from nearly nothing to become de facto king, he fought for Balliol and Scotland and not for himself. He proved the English could be beaten, he stood up for Scotland when most of her aristocratic leaders bent the knee, he would be remarkable in any age but for a man of his class and time his achievements were astounding. I sometimes compare Wallace to Lincoln, travelling from his wooden hut to the White House….an incredible rise…but now imagine he was mixed race.
But, I hear you cry, what about that massive sword in the National Wallace Monument? That blade measures 1.32m long and only a giant could have wielded it! Yes, absolutely – but I’m afraid the sword isn’t real; it’s made up of at least three other swords and is clearly an attempt to create a big sword for a big legend. However, the sword in question has ‘officially’ been Wallace’s sword for 500 years, so what exactly is going on? Well, around 1500, at yet another period of tension with England, James IV (brother-in-law to yet another English King) needed an anti-English symbol and what could be better than Wallace’s sword? Presumably having asked for the sword, either it couldn’t be found or it was extremely scabby, so rather than return to the King empty handed, someone decided to create a suitably impressive, absolutely massive and totally impractical sword!
As we know Wallace did not lead the only resistance against Edward I, nor was he the most successful and indeed his career ended in failure, betrayal and an excruciating execution. However, in the depths of Edward I’s base hatred we must surely find the heights of Wallace’s greatness – why else would Wallace and a handful of others be singled out for such terrible vengeance unless the King of England so feared and hated them?
Wallace was astonishing in a deeply conservative society: he had no silver spoon and his position depended both on his success and his ability to draw supporters to Scotland’s cause. After the Battle of Falkirk he was yesterday’s man, still an important rallying point for the people, but in the way of Scotland’s ‘real’ leaders. His betrayal was a necessary price to ensure that the great magnates regained their positions and land. Not so much the tree of liberty being watered with the blood of tyrants as the tree of liberty poisoned with the blood of martyrs.
4 Stirling and The Stewarts
Britain’s most successful Royal dynasty is of the course the Stuarts and their decedents still sit on the English and Scottish thrones. Now it is worth expanding on that name the family’s origins go back to their position as hereditary Stewards to the Monarch in the 12th century, this became Stewart and then Stuart.
Bruce’s daughter Marjorie married Walter The Steward and their son, Robert (later Robert II), founded the Stewart Royal House. Now Robert was not a very loyal subject to his younger uncle David II and this seems to have started a trend for the next few years: duplicitous nobles who were frequently relatives. Robert II used his power to empower his sons who, as Walter Bower put it ‘he maid rych and michty’ which of course created a series of rather large and serious unintended consequences. He faced a coup by his son, who was crowned Robert III and described himself as ‘the worst of kings and most wretched of men in the whole kingdom’ and asked to be buried in a midden. He was undermined by his son the Duke of Rothesay and his brother Robert Duke of Albany. In turn Albany betrayed and imprisoned his nephew Rothesay, letting him starve to death. His other nephew, the future James I, was captured while fleeing to France and held ransom by the English. His uncle, Robert Albany and his son Murdoch, the next Duke of Albany, took their time getting his nephew and king released and when James I came back he had Murdoch and his family executed for treason (Murdoch, his cousin, his two children and his father-in-law all fell to the axe). James I led a failed and ill-advised attempt to re-capture Roxburgh which was still in English hands, he panicked and fled leaving his artillery behind. He was later stabbed to death in a blocked drain under a tennis court in Perth, in retaliation for the execution of various relatives. James I’s queen Joan managed to survive the attack then extinguished the male line of the assassin’s family. James II stabbed The Earl of Douglas in Stirling Castle and then was killed by an exploding canon in conflict with England, again at Roxburgh. The infant James III was kidnapped in an attempted coup, his adult brother supported an English invasion and he was killed in a coup led by his son the future James IV, at the Battle of Sauchieburn. Although he did secure the Northern Isles for Scotland…as a wedding present! Phew…
This sort of sets the tone….James Vth, Mary Queen of Scots and James VIth all came to the throne as child monarchs and Scotland was buffeted from one crisis to the next. But they all loved Stirling and it was a very secure place in troubled times so hence the birth here of James III and IV and the Coronation of James Vth, Mary Queen of Scots and James VIth.
Stirling’s golden age was during the reigns of James IVth and Vth. James IV was born in Stirling and conducted an awful lot of government business there.[1] He felt an enormous sense of guilt at his role in his father’s death and embarked on a programme of penance. Simultaneously he also began to rebuild and renew Stirling Castle, building The Great Hall (for a while the largest in Britain), and the massive monumental gateway. It’s worth noting that from this version of the castle you could not see the town, as it simply spoiled the views. In addition he appears to have funded research into flight, built Europe’s largest ship (The Great Michael), reorganised the Royal Park and sponsored poets and playwrights. He married Henry VIII’s sister and the remains of their Royal Chapel are outside the church of the Holy Rude.
For me the most vivid details about this period are from the plays and the poetry. I quoted David Lyndsay earlier and another key poet was William Dunbar. In the poem The Fenyeit Freir of Tungland he satirises John Damian de Falcus, an Italian abbot and alchemist operating in James IV’s court, who conducts an experiment in flight by making a pair of wings. Needless to say, he fell to earth (or rather the castle rubbish dump) with a bang and broke his thigh. This bit describes the birds that pecked and swarmed John as he jumped from the castle walls:
Thick was the clud of kays and craws,
of merlins, mittanes and of maws,
That bickerit at his beard with blaws,
In battle him about:
They nibbit him with noyis and cry,
The rerd of them raise to the sky,
And ever he cried on Fortune, Fy.
His life was in to doubt.
Following the death of his father James V was crowned in Stirling Castle in the chapel Royal and he too loved being in Stirling and spent most of his Easters there.[2] He is responsible for the magnificent Stirling Castle Palace, one of the finest Renaissance palaces in Britain. James, his wife Mary of Guise and their daughter Mary Queen of Scots, mark the last bright gleam of Catholic Scotland and the peak of French influence. Like his uncle Henry VII he was very keen on jousting and built a new road from the castle to the new jousting grounds that his father had developed…this was called Bog’s Passage and cost £5 to build and is still visible today where it crosses the lower back walk!
Famously James V was known as the Guidman o’ Ballengeich. Ballengeich Road is a lovely but very steep road round the north side of the castle. The name is clearly Gaelic in origin, Bal– tends to mean village but in this case the name is often interpreted as ‘windy pass’. But to return to James, he got that nickname because according to legend he used a small track down to Ballengeich Road to have various adventures[3] in disguise amongst his subjects. The picture here is the northern Castle gate, the one probably used by James V. It’s at the top of a very steep slope full of brambles. It was designed to allow small numbers of troops in and out during sieges and was known at the Sally Port (from the French ‘saillir’, to surge through, while ‘port’ is of course gate). There is another one on the south side, but it’s covered by ivy. The Sally Port itself seems to have been sealed in 1689 when the outer defences were strengthened. It’s marked by a wee sign on the inside of the castle but there’s nothing to say whether James V really used it or not, but I like to think of him chuckling to himself as he crept out of the castle in disguise to have some fun in Stirling.
[1] In terms of the top three locations for charters signed in his reign it goes: Edinburgh (1475), Stirling (306), Glasgow (19).
[2] The top three places where documents were signed were Edinburgh (1475), Stirling (436) and Falkland (198).
[3] These adventures didn’t always end well and James once accidentally killed the Park Keeper’s wife’s cow with a gun.