THE STUARTS TO THE DEATH OF YAMES 111 17
The increasing importance which the royal capital was now assuming, speedily drew
attention to its exposed situation. In the reign of Robert IL the singular privilege had
been conceded to the principal inhabitants, of building dwellings within the Castle, so as
to secure their families and wealth from the constant inroads of the English; but now, in
the year 1450, immediately after the battle of Sark, the ancient city was enclosed within
fortified walls, traces of which still exist. They extended along the south declivity of the
ridge on which the older parts of the town are built; after crossing the West Bow, then
the principal entrance to the city, from the west; and running between the High Street,
and the hollow where the Cowgate was afterwards built, they crossed the ridge at the
Nether Bow, and terminated at the east end of the North Loch. Within these ancient
limits the Scottish capital must have possessed peculiar means of defence ; a city set on a
hill, and guarded by the rocky fortress-“ There watching ‘high the least alarms,”-it only
wanted such ramparts, manned by its burgher watch, to enable it to give protection to its
princes, and repel t.he inroads of the southern invader. The important position which it
now held, may be inferred from the investment in the following year of Patrick Cockburn
of Newbigging, the Provost of Edinburgh, in the chancellor’s oEce as governor of the
Castle ; as well as his appointment along with other commissioners, after the-defeat of the
English in the battle of Sark, to treat for the renewal of a truce. To this the young
King, now about twenty years of age, was the more induced, from his anxiety to see his
bride, Mary of Gueldera,--“ a lady,” says Drummond, “ young, beautiful, and of a masculine
constitution,”-whose passage from the Netherlands was only delayed till secure
of hindrance from the English fleet,
She accordingly arrived in Scotland, accompanied by a
numerous retinue of princes, prelates, and noblemen, who
were entertained with every mark of royal hospitality, and
witnessed the solemnisation of the marriage, as well as the
coronation, of the young Queen thereafter, both of which
took place in the Abbey of Holyrood, with the utmost pomp
and solemnity.
The first fruit of this marriage seems to have been the
rebellion of the Earl of Douglas, who, jealous of the influence
that the Lord Chancellor Crichtou had acquired with the
Queen, almost immediately thereafter proceeded to revenge
his private quarrel with fire and sword ; so that in the beginning
of the following year, a- Parliament was assembled at
Edinburgh, whose first enactmenta were directed against. such
encroachments on the royal prerogative. His further deeds of blood and rapine, at length
closed by a hasty blow of the King’s dagger in Stirling Castle, belong rather to Scottish
history ; as well as the death of the Monarch himself shortly after, by the bursting of the
Lyon, a famous cannon, at the siege of Roxburgh Castle, in the year 1460.
At this time, Henry VI., the exiled King of England, with his heroic Queen and son,
sought shelter at the Scottish Court, where they were fitly lodged in the monastery of the
Greyfriars, in the Grassmarket ; and so hospitably entertained by the court and citizens of
VIQNETTE-M~V of Gueldera’ Armefrom her -1.
C
