It has been thought that the Palace, the most important part of Stirling Castle, owes its origin to James IV. True, it is always spoken of as James V.’s building, but several extracts from the _Treasurer’s Accounts_ have led many to believe that the work was begun by the knight-errant monarch who fell on Flodden Field. Certainly, in 1496, Walter and John Merlioun, masons, were employed on the King’s house in Stirling, and in the following year the master-mason of Linlithgow rode over to give his advice. If the Palace, however, had been merely begun by James IV. the _Treasurer’s Accounts_ would not have contained references to glass for the windows and to other furnishings for a nearly furnished building;[93] and it is obvious by the style of the architecture, which is the earliest Renaissance work in Scotland, that the work could not have been completed before the fifth James succeeded to the throne. The house that was being erected by John and Walter Merlioun may have been the tower called the Keep, an older and plainer edifice than the Palace to which it has been joined. This building, then, was raised in the time of James V., the monarch during whose troubled reign the Renaissance style was introduced. The King’s visit to France for his marriage with Princess Madeleine in 1537, may have increased his interest in the architecture of the day, but the royal dwelling at Stirling was probably designed before the date of that alliance, as Sir James Hamilton of Finnart, who was James’s principal architect, and who is known to have worked at Stirling Castle,[94] had seen the French Renaissance structures twenty years before. [Illustration: JAMES V. AS “THE GUDEMAN O’ BALLENGEICH.”]