Both Edinburgh and Stirling Castles stand out darkly in the annals of the princely House of Douglas. In one king’s reign two chiefs of that great family were suddenly done to death when expecting courteous treatment in their sovereign’s own halls. The Earl who perished at Edinburgh, although a youth of sixteen years, was regarded by William Crichton, who had made himself chief man of affairs during James II.’s minority, as a danger to the peace of the realm. Crichton invited him to come with his young brother to Edinburgh, to enjoy the companionship of the boy king and to assist in the government of the country. Deep treachery, however, lurked behind the festivities which were held to greet the Earl’s arrival. At the close of a banquet given in honour of the Douglases, a bull’s head was set upon the table--a proceeding which the Earl at once recognised as a sign of his approaching death. A hasty trial was held for form’s sake, and thereafter the two youths were led to execution in spite of the earnest remonstrances of James. When at Stirling in later years this James of the Fiery Face drew his knife in his rage at another Earl of Douglas, he would have done well to have recalled, even in that moment of anger, the terrible scene of his boyhood at Edinburgh, and to have paused in horror at the thought of another royal castle’s being stained with the Douglas blood. Down to the time of the Union of the Crowns, and even later, Stirling Castle remained a royal residence, but the middle of the fifteenth century saw the beginning of a change in Edinburgh. Instead of taking up their abode in the fortress of Dunedin, the kings preferred to live in the valley with the canons of Holyrood Abbey. By the end of the century, the foundations of the palace had been laid, and thereafter the castle as a dwelling-place fell rapidly in the favour of the sovereigns of Scotland. A hundred years before the building of Holyrood Palace, however, a change of a different kind had taken place. Edinburgh having become by far the largest and most important town, English generals seldom penetrated into the heart of the country, deeming the sack of the capital the worst evil they could inflict. But for more than two centuries before the Union of the Crowns the only wars which troubled Stirling were those which Scots themselves stirred up when they found themselves at variance with their rulers. Dumbarton, again, lay open to invasion only from the sea, but this route was made use of by the traitor Earl of Lennox, when he sailed in the pay of Henry VIII., though he failed to induce the patriotic garrison to hand over to the English King the castle of which the Earl himself was governor and practical owner as well.