Memorials of the Castle of Edinburgh Author:James Grant Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER III. A.D. 1291—1314. CASTLE SURPRISED BY EARL RANDOLPH. Thus in two chapters we have briefly traced the Memorials of the Maiden Castle down to tha... more »t red era, the wars of the Scottish Succession—the darkest and bloodiest portion of our annals. On the death of Margaret the Maid of Norway, granddaughter of Alexander III., came the contested succession to the crown, between Bruce, Baliol, and others ; and thus to Edward I. of England was given an opportunity of advancing, to the Scottish throne, a claim as absurd as it was unfounded, but which that ferocious prince prosecuted to the last hour of his life with the most unrelenting barbarity and cruelty. It is well known that, when the rival competitors referred their claims to his decision, instead of managing the important trust with due fidelity and honour, he resolved, alike by secret intrigue and open force, to lose no opportunity of accomplishing the darling scheme of many an English king, by bringing Scotland under his own tyrannical sway, like the provinces of Wales and Ireland. On the llth June 1291, the town and castle of Edinburgh, with every place of strength in the kingdom, were unwisely and unwarily placed in the hands of the crafty Plantagenet by the noisy and numerous claimants of the throne, on the ridiculous pretence that the subject in dispute should be placed in the power of the umpire; andthe governors of the royal strongholds, on finding that the four nobles who had been appointed guardians of the realm until Margaret's marriage with Edward's son, had abandoned poor Scotland to her fate, they, too, quietly surrendered their several trusts to the English king, who nominated Sir Radulpho Basset de Drayton,1 a Norman knight of approved valour, governor of the Castle of Edinburgh, with a garrison of...« less