History of Lochleven Castle

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. QUEEN MARY AT LOCHLEVEN. Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate Full on thy bloom. Burns. The early historic incidents already narrated, although of undoubted importance, lose much of their interest when contrasted with the occurrences within and around the walls of Lochleven Castle during the...
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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. QUEEN MARY AT LOCHLEVEN. Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate Full on thy bloom. Burns. The early historic incidents already narrated, although of undoubted importance, lose much of their interest when contrasted with the occurrences within and around the walls of Lochleven Castle during the reign of the lovely but unfortunate Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland. It is on this brief but stirring epoch that the student of Scottish history invariably finds his attention chiefly rivetted, and it is to the associations of this period that Lochleven Castle is indebted for that deep historic interest which encircles its ruins. The hapless Queen's association with the Castle was not, as we are apt to suppose, limited merely to the term of her long imprisonment there, but extends over the greater part of the brief but eventful seven years which constituted the whole duration of her career as Queen of Scotland. Seven years does not form a very lengthened period in an average life, and even of her short life it did not constitute a large proportion, and yet, brief as it is, one feels bewildered in recalling the many important and tragic events which occurred within its limits. On the 15th day of August 1561, she?a widowed Queenat the early age of eighteen years?bade adieu for ever to France, where her earlier years had been spent amidst luxuries, pleasures, and refinements well calculated to make her life there, as it really appears to have been, a bright and happy one. Within five days she landed, in a cold and chilling Scotch mist, on the bare and rugged shores of her native country, and, amid great public rejoicings assumed her powers and duties and responsibilities as Queen of Scotland, surrounded by as motley a crowd of courtiers and advisers as ever yet enci...