_The King’s Park_ lies beyond the gardens, towards the south and south-west. It is about three miles in circumference, is surrounded by a wall of great antiquity, (9.) but is now almost entirely divested of wood, being chiefly pasture and cultivated ground. Here the king hunted the deer when disposed to enjoy the pleasures of the chace. A small oblong enclosure, which lies between the Castle and this territory, is called _the Butt Park_, having been the place where the court formerly enjoyed the sport of shooting at the butts. It is a somewhat remarkable circumstance, that the king and his attendants were in the habit of reaching these parks, not by the gradual descent of Ballangeigh, as might be supposed, but by a steep zig-zag path, which was led down the south-west face of the Castle-bank, (from a postern now built up, but still visible,) and immediately within the park wall, which there ascends the hill to the external fortifications of the Nether-bailiary of the Castle. This path is hardly to be now discerned. _The Gowlan Hills_, which lie between the Castle and the Bridge, form another of the objects, in the immediate neighbourhood, most deserving of notice. The most northernly eminence of these hills, is called the _Mote-hill_, which implies that, like various other eminences of the same appearance throughout Scotland, as at Scone in Perthshire, Dalmellington in Ayrshire, Carnwath and Biggar in Clydesdale, Minniegaff in Galloway, &c. &c. it was used at an early time as a place for the administration of justice—mote signifying law,—hence the phrase _moot point_, expressing a case at issue in law. The Mote-hill of Stirling is still observably marked at top with the benches of earth on which the jurors sat: in the centre there is a mound somewhat like the King’s Knote. In later times, this hill was used as a place of execution. In 1424, James I. here caused to be beheaded, his cousin, Murdoch Duke of Albany, together with Walter and Alexander, the sons of that prince, and the Earl of Lennox, his aged father-in-law, all in the course of two days, in retribution, it is supposed, for the exertions which they had made to get him kept prisoner in England, while they enjoyed the management of his kingdom. The author of the Lady of the Lake thus apostrophises the Mote-hill: ‘And thou, O sad and fatal mound, That oft hast heard the death-axe sound, As on the noblest of the land, Fell the stern headsman’s bloody hand!’