The mighty Edinburgh Castle has dominated its surroundings majestically for centuries.For 3000 years tribal chiefs and sovereign kings have held sway from the castle rock.In the ancient times they called it "Din Eidyn" the stronghold of Eidyn,though who or what Eidyn was is a mystery (legend tells of a local giant called the Red Etin).By the 6th century AD,the rock was the forturess of Mynyddog the Magnificent,the king of Gododdin,the native British tribe.Then came the marauding Angles around 638,and ever since then the rock has been known by its English name-Edinburgh in the middle ages.Edinburgh became Scotlands chief royal castle.it was also the main arsenal of the realm,housing such monsters as Mons Meg,one of the most remarkable of all medieval guns.It was too the nations safety deposit box holding the crown jewels and the state archives of Scotland.By the time King James V1 birth there in June 1566,the castle was the first and principle strength of the realm.When James left for london in 1603 to become King James 1 of England also,the castle became little more than a garrison fortress.Edinburgh"s origins as a royal castle reach back to David 1"s reign in the 12th century.The youngest of King Malcolm 111 and Queen Margarets six sons.David became an effective ruler of southern Scotland as early as 1113.the most vigerous and courteous of kings they say,he began the process of setting an immigrant aristocricy,the Normans on Scottish soil,a development that continued after his death in 1153,under the encouragement of his two grandsons who succeeded him.Malcolm 1V the Maiden and William 1.David was born in Dumfermline in 1080,but had been bought up at the court of Henry 1 of England,william the conquerors son.Henry had married Davids elder sister Matilda.While in England David observed at first hand Anglo-Norman customs,and when he returned to the land of his birth,he brought with him an Anglo-Norman education,an Anglo_Norman wife and a large following of Anglo-Norman knights.Life in Scotland was never going to be quite the same again.
His legacy was immence.He reorganised the church and introduced the new monastic orders,including the Augustinians to nearby Holyrood Abbey,he established towns such as Edinburgh and Cannongate,he built mints for the striking of coin,and he forced the pace on the feudalizing of Scotland.One thing is for sure -it was a boom time for the building industry,and alongside the new monastries,parish churches and towns arose the castles,the most potant symbol of the new order in Scotland. They included Edinburgh atop its rock.Nothing now remains of King Davids royal stronghold other than the little chapel named in honour of Davids saintly mother,where he and Queen Maud heard mass each morning.St Margarets chapel stands on the highest part of the rock ,and its delightfull interior has a fine chevroned chancel arch,it is the oldest building in the castle,and indeed in Edinburgh.
Edinburgh Castle has an air of awesome impregnibility about it,sufficient to of moved the poet,John Taylor in 1618 to wax lyrical about it being so strongly grounded,bounded and founded that by a force of man it may never be confounded.Yet it was confounded,time and again.Edward 1 of England ,the Hammer of the Scots battered the fortress into submission over three days in 1296,during those heady first days of the wars of Independance.and a feat of derring-do by King Robert The Bruce"s nephew ,Sir Thomas Randolph,retook it in March 1314,shortly before Bruces great victory over Edward 11 at Bannockburn.Randolphs men inched there way up the precipitous north face,overlooking what is now Princes Street Gardens,and caught the English garrison off guard.And so it went ,back and forth throughout the Wars of Independance.
One siege was so protracted it became known as the Lang Siege,when Sir William Kirkcaldy of Granges men,still loyal to Mary Queen of Scots(who had just abdicated) held out for 18 months between 1571 and 1573 against James Douglas,earl of Morton ,regent for the infant James V1.An English spy,sent north to assess the castles strength in support of Morton,reported back that no mining could be prevail in this rock but only battery with ordanance to beat down the walls.and thats what they did,battering down the walls with heavy guns,even then it took ten days of bombardment before the mighty Davids Tower (named in honour of David 11,Bruces son)was brought crashing down.In its place Regent Morton built a great curved artillery defence,the Half Moon Battery,unique in design and giving Edinburgh Castle an appearance unrivalled anywhere else in the world.The castle endured further sieges,including one in 1715 when James the Pretender,son of the late James v11 and 11,tried to wrest the throne back for the Stewarts.When James"s son Bonnie Prince Charlie,laid rather desultry siege to the fortress in 1745,the eldely governor of the castle ,General Preston,took to touring the defences in his bath chair,to keep the sentries on their toes.The only alarm came on the night of 25th September,but the scrambling noise heard out from the castle rock was not the Jacobites,just goats grazing on the grassy tufts.
Edinburgh Castle is truely a majical place and an amazing place to visit,steeped in its incredible history