King Charles I. was a native of Scotland, but he left his fatherland when a child of tender years, and although he was anxious to travel north with James when that monarch obeyed what he called his salmon-like instinct, not until 1633 did Charles set foot again upon Scottish soil. Each year after his accession to the throne his northern subjects had expected his arrival, but time after time their sanguine hopes had been doomed to disappointment. In November, 1631, the Privy Council believed that Charles’s promised visit was at length near at hand. Not only were the royal apartments at Stirling made ready for the King, but, in order that he might enjoy the sport his father loved, the hunting of hares was strictly forbidden within eight miles of the castle. At last, when Charles had finally made up his mind to venture into Scotland, the Privy Council reissued the decree regarding the protection of ground game.[74] The townspeople of Stirling, however, were to have but poor reward for their long and patient waiting. During his Scottish visit in 1633, the King passed two nights in the castle in the beginning of July, as he journeyed from Edinburgh to Fife and Perth, and when a few days later he returned to the Scottish capital he avoided the detour by the Old Bridge of Forth and crossed the Firth in a storm.[75] The outbreak of the Great Civil War brought Stirling Castle again to the front. The Covenanting party being dominant at the time, Parliament decreed in 1640 that the fortresses should be placed in the charge of trusty natives of Scotland, although the Earl of Mar was not deprived of his heritable right to the custody of the castle.[76] In this year Archibald, Earl of Argyll, while endeavouring to force the Covenant on the Highlanders of Central Scotland, seized the Earl of Atholl in his camp in Strathtay and sent him prisoner to Stirling Castle.[77] After a brief stay in the fortress, however, the nobleman was conveyed to the capital, where an agreement was entered into by which he recovered his freedom. In 1644 the great Marquis of Montrose began his brilliant series of military successes. Not only did the Highland clans rise, as always, for the House of Stewart, but a considerable body of Scoto-Irish troops had landed in the west to support the King’s cause. After the Covenanters’ defeat at Tippermuir the Government began to be seriously alarmed, and Sir Archibald Primrose, Clerk to the Privy Council, was ordered to write to Livingstone of Westquarter, urging him to look well after the town, castle and bridge of Stirling, in case the Irish soldiers should take their route that way.[78] The castle, however, though garrisoned and prepared, did not figure in the wars of Montrose; for the Marquis turned northwards after Tippermuir, and when he eventually descended on the Lowlands he crossed the Forth by the Fords of Frew and not by Stirling Bridge.