During the regencies of Robert of Albany and his son Murdoch, who succeeded to the dukedom and to the office of keeper of Stirling Castle, carpenters and masons were employed from time to time in repairing and improving the fortress. The Chapel was to a large extent rebuilt in 1412, the year that saw the erection of the Chapel of Linlithgow Palace. Duke Robert died in Stirling Castle in 1420, and four years later James I. returned to his native country after eighteen winters of captivity in England. The author of _The Kingis Quair_ was an eminent poet, an accomplished knight, a constitutional monarch and a man of iron will. He was determined to strengthen the power of the Crown, not for his own selfish ends, but for the purpose of bringing the country into order. Unfortunately, however, he carried out his policy with haste and with merciless severity. Stirling was made the scene of James’s relentless harshness only a year after his coronation at Scone. The King came to reside in the castle, and held a court on the 24th of May, 1425, at which he presided crowned and in his robes of state. A jury consisting of twenty-one barons, among whom were the Earls of Douglas, March and Angus, condemned Walter Stewart, Albany’s eldest son, on a charge of robbery. The unfortunate man was promptly executed on the Heading Hill of Stirling. Next day the same jury, evidently acting in accordance with the King’s desires, pronounced Duke Murdoch and another son guilty, although the crimes for which they suffered have not been brought to light. Doubtless James believed that the lawless state in which he found his kingdom was due to the misgovernment of the Albanys, and he may have thought that the Regents did not sufficiently exert themselves to procure for him an earlier release. The prospect of acquiring the estates of his kinsmen may also have influenced James. At any rate, the blood-stained Heading Hill witnessed the deaths of the father and the brother of its previous sufferer, as well as that of Albany’s father-in-law, the aged Earl of Lennox. Sir John Kennedy, a nephew of the King, was, a few years later, imprisoned in Stirling Castle.[25] It is little wonder that the pitiless policy of James stirred up feelings of revenge amongst the nobles. His relatives were not the only prominent persons who felt their sovereign’s severity. Sir Robert Graham, who had once been imprisoned by the King, and whose nephew had been deprived of the Earldom of Strathearn, resolved to rid Scotland of her rigorous ruler. The assassination took place at Perth; but Graham was captured and brought to Stirling, where he was cruelly tortured to death. He felt sure he would be looked upon as a national deliverer; but neither his own contemporaries nor later generations so considered him, for the Poet-King, in spite of his heartless repressive measures, has always been a popular hero in Scotland.