78 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Edinburgh Castle.
entrance to the apartment in which her daughter
was delivered of James VI, It was formerly part
of a large room which, before being partitioned,
measured 30 by 25 feet. On the I 1 th of February,
1567, after the murder of Darnley, Mary retired
to this apartment, where she had the walls hung
with black, and remained in strict seclusion until
after the funeral. Killigrew, who came from
Elizabeth with letters of condolence, on his introduction
found (( tbe Queen?s Majesty in a
dark chamber, so that he could not see her
face, but by her words she seemed very doleful.?
In 1849, an antique iron chisel, spear-shaped,
was found in the fireplace of this apartment,
which was long used as a canteen for the soldiers,
but has now been renovated, though in a rude
and inelegant form.
Below the grand hall are a double tier of
strongly-vaulted dungeons, entered by a passage
from the west, and secured by an intricate arrangement,
of iron gates and massive chains. In one
of these Kirkaldy of Grange buried his brother
David Melville. The small loophole that admits
light into each of these huge vaults, whose
origin is lost in the mists of antiquity, is strongly
secured by three ranges of iron bars. Within these
drear abodes have captives of all kinds pined, and
latterly the French prisoners, forty of whom slept
in each. In some are still the wooden frames to
which their hammocks were slung. Under Queen
Mary?s room there is one dungeon excavated out
of the solid rock, and having, as we have said, an
iron staple in its wall to which the prisoner was
chained.
The north side of the quadrangle consists now
of an uninteresting block of barracks, erected about
the middle of the eighteenth century, and altered,
but scarcely improved, in 1860-2, by the Royal Engineers
and Mr. Charles W. Billings. It occupies the
site, and was built from the materials, of what was
once a church of vast dimensions and unknown antiquity,
but the great western gable of which was long
ago a conspicuous feature above the eastern curtain
wall. By Maitland it is described as ((a very long
and large ancient church, which from its spacious
dimensions I imagine that it was not only built for
the use of the garrison, but for the service of the
neighbouring hinabitants before St. Giles?s church
was erected for their accommodation.? Its great
font, and many beautifully carved stones were found
built into the barrack wall during recent alterations.
It is supposed to have been a church erected after
the death of the pious Queen Margaret, and dedicated
to her, as it is mentioned by David I. in his
Holyrood charter as ?the church of the Castle
of Edinburgh,? and is again confirmed as such in the
charter of Alexander 111. and several Papal bulls,
and the ?( paroche kirk within the said Castell,? is
distinctly referred to by the Presbytery of Edinburgh
in 1595.? In 1753 it was divided into three
storeys, and filled with tents, cannon, and other munitions
of war.
A winding stair descends from the new barracks
to the butts, where the rock is defended
by the western wall and Bute?s Battery, near which,
at an angle, a turret, named the Queen?s Post,
occupies the site of St. Margaret?s Tower. Fifty
feet below the level of the rock is another guardhouse
and one of the draw-wells poisoned by the
Englishin 1572. Kear it is the ancient posterngate,
where Dundee held his parley with the Duke of
Gordon in 1688, and through which, perhaps, St.
Margaret?s body was borne in 1093.
From thence there is a sudden ascent by steps,
behind the banquette of the bastions and near
the principal, magazine, to Mylne?s Mount, where
there is another grate for a bale-fire to alarm Fife,
Stirling, and the north. The fortifications are
irregular, furnished throughout with strong stone
turrets, and prepared for mounting about sixty
pieces of cannon. Two door-lintels covered with
curious sculptures are still preserved : one over the
entrance to the ordnance office represents Mons
Meg and other ancient cannon ; the other a cannoneer
of the sixteenth century, in complete armour,
in the act of loading a small culverin.
The Castle farm is said to have been the ancient
village of Broughton, which St. David granted to
the monks of Holyrood ; the Castle gardens we
have already referred to; and to the barns, stables,
and lists attached to it, we shall have occasion to
refer elsewhere.
The Castle company was a corps of Scottish
soldiers raised in January 1661, and formed a
permanent part of the garrison till 1818, when,
with the ancient band of Mary of Guise, which
garrisoned the Castle of Stirling, they were incorporated
in cne of the thirteen veteran battalions
emjodied in that year. The Castle being within
the abrogated parish of Holyrood, has a burial-place
for its garrison in the Canongate churchyard ; but
dead have been buried within the walls frequently
during sieges and blockades, as in 1745, when nineteen
soldiers and three women were interred on the
summit of the rock.
The Castle is capable of containing 3,000 infantry;
but the accommodation for troops is greatly ;
neglected by Government, and the barracks have
Wodmw?s ? I Miscellany.?
