the following day, accompanied by twelve armed
? men, disguised as seamen, with hoods over their
helmets, he appeared at the Castle gates, where they
contrived to overturn their casks and hampers, so
as to prevent the barriers being closed by the
guards and warders, who were instantly slain. At
a given signal-the shrill blast of a bugle-horn-
Douglas and his companions, with their war-cry,
rushed from a place of concealment close by. Sir
Richard de Limoisin, the governor, made a bitter
resistance, but was overpowered in the end, and
his garrison became the prisoners of David II.,
who returned from France in the following month,
accompanied by his queen Johanna; and by that
time not an Englishman was left in Scotland. But
miserable was the fate of Bullock. By order of a
Sir David Berkeley he was thrown into the castle
of Lochindorb, in Morayshire, and deliberately
starved to death. On this a Scottish historian
remarks, ? It is an ancient saying, that neither the
powekful, nor the valiant, nor the wise, long
flourish in Scotland, since envy obtaineth the
mastery of them all.?
When, a few years afterwards, the unfortunate
battle of Durham ended in the defeat of the Scots,
and left their king a prisoner of war, we find
in the treaty for his ransom, the merchants of
Edinburgh, together with those of Perth, Aberdeen,
atid Dundee, binding themselves to see it paid.
In 1357 a Parliament was held at Edinburgh for
its final adjustment, when the Regent Robert
(afterwards Robert 11.) presided ; in addition to
the clergy and nobles, there were present delegates
from seventeen burghs, and among these Edinburgh
In 1365 we find a four years? truce with England,
signed at London on the 20th May, and in
the Castle on the 12th of June; and another for
I appeared at the head for thejrst time.
fourteen years, dated at the Castle 28th October,
1371-
So often had the storm of war desolated its
towers, that the Castle of Edinburgh (which
became David?s favourite residence after his return
from England ?in 1357) was found to require
extensive repairs, and to these the king devoted
himself. On the cliff to the northward he built
?David?s Tower,? an edifice of great height and
strength, and therein he died on the zznd February,
1371, and was buried before the high altar
at Holyrood. The last of the direct line of Brucea
name inseparably connected with the military
glory and independence of Scotland-David was a
monarch who, in happier times, would have done
much to elevate his people. The years of his
captivity in England he beguiled with his pencil,
and in a vault of Nottingham Castle ?he left
behind hini,? says Abercrornbie, in his ? Martial
Achievements,? I? the whole story of our Saviour?s
Passion, curiously engraven on the rock with his
own hands. For this, says one, that castle became
as famous as formerly it had been for Mortimer?s
hole.?
It was during bis reign that, by the military
ingenuity of John Earl of Carrick and four other
knights of skill, the Castle was so well fortified, that,
with a proper garrison, the Duke of Rothesay was
able to resist the utmost efforts of Henry IV.,
when he besieged it for several weeks in 1400.
The Castle had been conferred as a free gift upon
Earl John by his father King Robert, and in consequence
of the sufferings endured by the inhabitants
when the city was burned by the English,
under Richard II., he by charter empowered the
citizens to build houses within the fortress, free of
fees to the constable, on the simple understanding
that they were persons of good fame.
?
.
-
CHAPTER IV.
CASTLE OF EDINBURGH-(continucd).
Progress of the Cuy-Ambassador of Charles VI.- Edinburgh burned-Henry IV. batAed-Albany?s Prophecy-Laws regarding the Building
of House-Sumptuary Laws, 1457-Murder of James I.-Coronation of James 11.-Court Intrigues-Lord Chancellor Crichton-Arrogance
of the Earl of Douglas-~-Faction Wars-The Castle Besieged-? The Black DinneF?-Edinburgh walled-Its Strength-Bale-fires.
THE chief characteristic of the infant city now was
that of a frontier town, ever on the watch to take
arms against an invader, and resolute to resist him.
Walsingham speaks of it as a village ; and in 1385
its population is supposed to have barely exceeded
2,oooj yet Froissart called it the Pans of Scotland,
though its central street presented but a
meagre line of thatched or stane-dated houses,
few of which were more than twenty feet in height.
Froissart numbers them at 4,000, which would
give a greater population than has been alleged.
With the accession of Robert 11.-the first of the
