Our History Within Its Walls

by Zoe Weir

The north range, reconstructed 1618-24; one of Scotland’s finest Renaissance facades

Used and abused by the English; Linlithgow Palace endured so much before the slide into Union brought her low. Her creation, aggrandizement, and violent ruination run in parallel with Scotland’s millennium-long struggle for autonomy. Now roofless, but impressive still, her lofty walls offer superb views across loch and grounds. Her interior too, just keeps on giving, every doorway opening onto multiple passageways and crannies. She doubled as “Wentworth Prison” in Outlander’s infamous dungeon torture scenes, and draws tens of thousands of visitors each July to the annual Spectacular Jousting weekend.

LinIithgow housed kings even before Scotland’s modern borders were fixed; David I, Malcolm IV, and William the Lion all used the royal manor house. But it was an English invader, Edward I, who in 1302 began to fortify it, while fighting the Scots in the Wars of Independence (1296-1357). He had it surrounded with “a Pele, mekill and stark” (a stockade, large and strong), and used it as the English army’s main store of supplies for use in besieging the Scots at Stirling Castle. Edward gave Scots a choice they would grow familiar with over the coming centuries; swear fealty to the English Crown, or forfeit goods and land. He had the defiant Wallace hung, emasculated, eviscerated and beheaded in 1305, claiming continued dominion even after the crowning of Robert the Bruce as King of Scots in 1306. The Scots’ legendary resistance resulted in triumph and liberation at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314.

Edward gave Scots a choice they would grow familiar with over the coming centuries

Meanwhile, Linlithgow palace had been retaken by Bruce supporters. The peel was demolished and the castle refortified, housing the royal court of King David II in 1343, but was burnt to the ground along with most of the town in 1424. From these ashes, James I built a palace, upon his return from being held captive in England. Other high-status hostages remained in English hands, and James had a bill passed to raise taxes for the ransom. However, he diverted more than half the money into palace construction instead, spending a tenth of the royal income on it until his assassination by the Earl of Atholl, his own uncle, in 1437.

His son, James II, kept the palace in good repair, but in 1460 was injured by a faulty cannon, as he besieged English stragglers still holding Roxburgh Castle. His femur was shattered, and he died of blood loss, aged 23. His son, James III, continued to develop the quadrangled courtyard structure. He gifted the palace to Denmark’s Margaret upon their marriage in 1469; her dowry was the sovereignty of Orkney and Shetland, which became Scottish in 1472. Her son, James IV, gave the palace to his own bride: another Margaret, this one a Tudor. Their marriage treaty was signed on the same day in 1502 as the Perpetual Treaty of Peace, the first such Anglo-Scottish agreement in 170 years.