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Gone Medieval
Castles, Kings and Courtly Life
00:37:26
From strategically important fortress to Renaissance palace, Dr. Eleanor Janega looiks atStirling Castle.
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- [00:01]
Matt Lewis
Hello, I'm Matt Lewis.
- [00:03]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
And I'm Dr. Eleanor Yonega, and we're.
- [00:05]
Matt Lewis
Just popping up here to tell you some insider info.
- [00:08]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
If you would like to listen to Gone Medieval ad free and get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit.
- [00:15]
Matt Lewis
With the History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original.
- [00:20]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
Documentaries, such as my new series on.
- [00:22]
Dr. William Hepburn
Everyone'S favorite conquerors, the Normans, or my.
- [00:25]
Matt Lewis
Recent exploration of the castles that made Britain.
- [00:29]
Dr. William Hepburn
There's a new release to enjoy every week.
- [00:32]
Matt Lewis
Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com subscribe or find the link in the Show Notes for this episode. Thanks for listening to Gone Medieval. You can get all History Hit podcasts ad free, early access and bonus episodes. Head over to History Hit or you can sign up on Apple Podcasts with just one click.
- [01:08]
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- [02:26]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
Hello, I'm Dr. Eleanor Yanaga and welcome to Gone Medieval from History Hit, the podcast that delves into the greatest millennium in human history. We uncover the greatest mysteries, the gobsmacking details, and the latest groundbreaking research. From the Vikings to the Normans, from kings to Popes to the Crusades, we delve into the rebellions, plots and murders that tell us who we really were and how we got here. How did the castle rise up and evolve over centuries to symbolize royal power and enable court life to flourish?
- [03:07]
Dr. William Hepburn
Well, of course, withstanding the occasional siege.
- [03:10]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
Or attack, all this month In a special series of Gone Medieval episodes, Matt Lewis and myself are ranging across England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland to discover the stories of our greatest castles. How were they built and put to use? What do they represent as symbols of authority and the good life? Well, for some folks, what does what's left of them tell us about times gone by and their significance? In the first three episodes, we've taken a look at what the castles represented in Dover in the very southeast corner of England, Conwy in the north of Wales and Trim in the northeast of Ireland. Do not miss those if you haven't listened to them already. Today we move to the centre of Scotland to find out about one of its most iconic and strategically important fortresses, Stirling Castle. As it evolved over centuries, Stirling reflected Scotland's changing political and cultural landscape. The early wooden structures gave way to stone fortifications, which in turn were transformed into a Renaissance palace. Stirling Castle has been described as the huge brooch clasping Highlands and Lowlands together. To find out more, I'm joined by Dr. William Hepburn, honorary Research Fellow at the University of Aberdeen. He's the author of the recently published the Household and Court of James iv of Scotland, 1488-1513.
- [04:40]
Dr. William Hepburn
William, welcome to Gone Medieval.
- [04:42]
William Hepburn
Thank you. Good to be here.
- [04:44]
Dr. William Hepburn
I'm incredibly excited to talk to about Stirling Castle because this is one of those really enigmatic castles. You know, all you have to do is go once and you're immediately being an idiot. Romantic about it, I think. But in order to talk about it, I think we have to really kind of go back to the actual beginnings of what makes Stirling Castle such a great place to have a castle. So can you just tell me a little bit about its location and the strategic importance of that site over time?
- [05:14]
William Hepburn
The location of Stirling is significant within the kingdom of Scotland as a whole because it sits on the boundary of the Highlands and the Lowlands. Geographically, there's Lowland Scotland in the south and east of the country, broadly speaking, where the good farming land is, and so on. Then there's Highland Scotland with mountains and difficult terrain to pass. And nowadays, post industrialization, the vast majority of the population is in the Lowlands. But back in the Middle Ages, it was much more evenly divided, and maybe it was more about 50, 50 between those two parts of the country. And this is a theme in both contemporary writing, but particularly in historiography, is the idea that there was a real cultural divide between these two areas, which is probably overstated, but certainly geographically there it's a big difference, and this was a link between the two. So in the broad Sense, that was the significance of the location, more specifically, Stirling itself. Strategically, you can't get a better illustration of this than Matthew Paris's map from about 1250, which shows the point of Stirling as basically like a bridge between two land masses, as if this was the only way you could get across. And I think this is difficult to see nowadays, or it's difficult to see where that impression was coming from, because a lot of the land around Stirling has been drained in more modern times. So you can see why it was viewed in that sense as this one place where you could cross. But at the time, there was a lot of marshy land around Stirling, so it was important in that sense as a place where you could cross between these parts of Scotland.
- [06:43]
Dr. William Hepburn
And it's got this really incredibly dramatic location as well, because it's on top of this really dramatic kind of volcanic crag. So you can really see how this is a place where people can look out and really view who may or may not be crossing and control that as well, right?
- [07:01]
William Hepburn
Yeah, absolutely. It's visible as well for a long way around in this important kind of intersection in the Scottish kingdom. And the thing is, it looks romantic and also it definitely has the gauge historic way to back that up, which I guess we'll get into.
- [07:16]
Dr. William Hepburn
Well, exactly. So, you know, obviously here we've got this castle at an incredibly important cultural meeting point between Highlands and Lowlands, at an incredibly important crossing point for the fourth. But when does it begin to emerge as a castle of national importance? You know, you can see why it did. But at what point in time does this become a convenient place for leaders to have a castle like this?
- [07:43]
William Hepburn
It was a stronghold of some sort, going back to early medieval times or before we start to see kings using this as a residence from about the 12th century, roughly. And then it's into the later Middle Ages where we get the evidence of the castle as it exists now being built.
- [08:00]
Dr. William Hepburn
And when it begins to be built, is it first in stone, or do we have earlier indications that there might have been timber structures or anything like that here, or are we just going straight into mimicking what the Normans are doing down in England?
- [08:15]
William Hepburn
No, there's definitely a suggestion that a lot of the structures were wood before what we have now, which kind of comes in the Stuart era. And the castle we'll get into, I think, the wars of Independence a bit later on. But that alone is showing that the castle was rebuilt and changed a lot during that period. And certainly suggestion is that a lot of the structures would have been Wooden as it exists now and probably as it was back then, it's not just one structure, it's several different buildings linked together. And that's really clear now when you visit the site.
- [08:44]
Dr. William Hepburn
So when we begin to move into the era of the stone castle, which I think is what most of us think of, if you just say the word castle, this is about the 12th century and around the reign of Alexander I, if memory serves me correctly, what is it that begins to transform this to not just, I guess, a fortress, it's strategically important, you know, why you would want to control it, but a castle and a royal residence?
- [09:09]
William Hepburn
That's a good question. And I would say it probably goes down to that location that we've talked about already, that in the earlier centuries of the Middle Ages that we're talking about, Scottish kings were, as they remained into the later Middle Ages, highly mobile, highly itinerant when moving around the country. And I think this location that we've talked about is this kind of gateway between different parts of the country is probably what made this an attractive site. And then later on, even though kings were still highly itinerant, they do have a more regular stamping ground around Stirling, Edinburgh and Lithgow, this kind of what we now call the central belt.
- [09:44]
Dr. William Hepburn
So you've mentioned already that this is kind of a collection of buildings. I think it's a really important point that often gets overlooked in terms of castles. I think that we tend to think of a castle and we're like, oh, yes, towers, some parapets, things like that, but there's all sorts of buildings inside of a castle complex. And I believe that one of the earliest ones at Stirling is actually a chapel, which I think is a really important point when we think about castles as centers of royal power. Can you talk a little bit about what chapels mean for royalty when they're establishing somewhere like a castle?
- [10:23]
William Hepburn
Yeah. And the chapel from back then, this sort of early architectural evidence, up to the more prominent things that we can still see now, Chapel is a central part of Stirling and religious worship as part of a king's. How they demonstrate their authority and appeal to a wider medieval moral compass, if you like, is through showing their religious devotion. And then also particularly towards the later Middle Ages, I think, at least shaping that in some way according to their own interests, the saints that they want to use to demonstrate something about themselves. So there's early evidence of a chapel and then ends up in the later Middle Ages, a chapel royal is established there and a new building is created for it, and then a New building again is made in the 16th century in the reign of James VI, and that's the one we have now. So quite a spectacular house for this kind of official expression of royal religion.
- [11:17]
Dr. William Hepburn
Could you just explain what the difference between a chapel royal and a regular chapel would be?
- [11:22]
William Hepburn
So it's a collegiate church, so there's a permanent establishment of chaplains to say prayers for the person that established the collegiate church, in this case the King. So that's basically the setup of it. And in this case it's providing a staff of clerics to carry out religious worship to support that royal image, this idea of the King as a good Christian, and also, of course, pray for the souls of the King and his family and the kings that came before and so on. And it's part of that arsenal of things that the King is using to project quite a sophisticated message at times about who they are and how they want to be seen. So that's through architecture, that's through song, it's through music.
- [12:02]
Dr. William Hepburn
So when we see this transformation of Stirling into a very important royal castle, we see this really explicit religious devotion as a part of that. You know, we're building chapels, we're building in stone. This is a new vernacular. And we are kind of coming up and on terms, I suppose, with anyone else in Europe. But do the kings of Scotland, are they specifically looking to amp this up at Stirling and do they do it in any other way? I mean, is this a project where they say, you know, we've got to get Stirling on the map. Everybody needs to know about this.
- [12:38]
William Hepburn
So James iv, he's the king that I wrote most about, and he's from the late 15th until the early 16th century. He reigns, and he did a lot of building work across the main royal palaces. So you've got Holyrood palace at Edinburgh, which was really his main base. And Edinburgh was, at this point, the kings remained, or at least were supposed to remain highly itinerant. And James IV did back that up. His dad seemed to get into a bit of trouble because he didn't really conform to that expectation. Sort of just stuck himself away in Edinburgh a bit too much. But Edinburgh was becoming increasingly the capital for administration. But the king regularly moved around. But his main bases were Edinburgh, Stirling, Lithgow and that kind of circuit, although he did move around a lot from there. They worked on all these palaces, but Stirling, despite Edinburgh, and a lot of work happened there, and that was the main royal base. Stirling was the one that he spent the most money on, did the most work on, so it does stand out in that regard. So maybe it was because it needed the most to bring it up to the standard that he wanted, but certainly it was part of a big program and one of the most important parts, if not the most important part, of the changes that were coming about in that reign. In particular, the fabric that we have now is mostly from the Stuart period. There's evidence that the kings up till that point, so the Stuart dynasty starts in 1371, that they had been doing bits of upkeep and so on, and maybe there was some work in the reign of James iii. There's a suggestion that he might have started building a house for a chapel royal, eventually got properly founded in the reign of his son, James iv. But the real change comes about in the reign of James iv and then it gets carried on into the reign of James V. And certainly, yeah, in terms of building work being done under James iv, it is the main site.
- [14:23]
Dr. William Hepburn
There's also a point I want to get to here because again, when we think of castles, we think of the structure. Right. But one of the things that's going on at Stirling is it's also a site of leisure for kings. And some of the work that's happening is not just building in stone. Right. It's establishing a deer park, which I think is so incredibly important from the standpoint of royalness. Right. Like the idea that one has hunting grounds and is able to attract other people. And I think that often gets lost when we talk about castles, but this attendant idea that it's the grounds as well. I wonder if you could say a little bit about Stirling as a place of pleasure and not just power.
- [15:03]
William Hepburn
Yeah, I think that's a key part of what Stirling's about. Certainly an indication that most of the business is going on in Edinburgh. There's plenty of business going on in Stirling, but there's suggestion that Stirling maybe had more of a character of somewhere to get away to. Do you still see it command in the landscape? It's part of what makes it most such a dramatic site to see. And you can see it from all around. And it has a hunting grounds in its immediate vicinity, but it also provides easy access to other hunting sites in the slightly broader area around it. Such as James IV had a hunting hall built in Glenfinglas, which is still a beautiful place, you can go for a walk. And he often went there for hunting regularly. And he was a really active king, got out and about hunting. He also very ostentatiously did pilgrimages up and down the country the kind of length of Scotland to a shrine to sit down in Dumfries and Galway area, Whithorn, and up to the shrine of Saint Douthick up in Tain. And I guess Stirling would have been, as we say, with this link to the Highlands and down at the Lowlands, provided good access to those places. Yeah, I think a lot of what Stirling is about is a place of leisure as well as, I guess, the dividing line between leisure and politics. It's not an easy one to draw in this period, but it's a place away from maybe official business, if you want, use that slightly anachronistic way of looking at it. But also it's within the. The castle, but it's also stretching out into the landscape, both in the immediate vicinity, in the wider region and even in the shape of the kingdom as a whole.
- [16:31]
Dr. William Hepburn
They've done this fantastic job at Stirling of melding all of these royal considerations, because it obviously exudes power, being where it is and being in this incredibly strategic and important location. We've got these religious aspects because of the incredible chapels there. We've got a way of enticing other powerful people to come and visit by saying, you can come on out to the Deer Park. And as a result of this, we see, you know, until the union of the crowns in about 1603, every Scottish monarch spends at least some time at Stirling. You know, like, either they're born there or they're crowned there, or they die there. And, you know, this is a very, very successful project in that way. But we're edging now into the 15th and 16th centuries. People will call this the Renaissance. I've got trouble with that term. We see then, as a result, a series of modifications that start happening to Sterling. Could we say that these are things that are done very specifically to react to the expectations of a more modern court?
- [17:36]
William Hepburn
I think so. I think it's hard not to see James IV's reign and what he did as a response to his father's reign. So his father died near Stirling at the Battle of Sohyburn, which is pretty much on the site of Bannockburn, and he died at the hands of a rebellion of which his teenage son was the figurehead. How much he was really involved in it is less clear. But he was the kind of figurehead of these people, that it wasn't an overthrow of the dynasty or anything like that. It was just a lot of people that became annoyed with the way they were treated with James iii, to the extent that it coalesced into Enough people to lead to that kind of conflict. Anyway, some of the things that annoyed them about James were that, as I say, he hid himself away a bit, basically didn't give enough access to the political class of the kingdom who expected access to the King and access to the machinery of power and also an informal network. And just the year of the King and James IV seems to have had an instinct for providing those opportunities for people to see him, people to talk to him. And I think that's a lot of what lies behind the things that were carried out. Stirling make this an attractive place that could house people to come there and be with the King. I think you can certainly talk about architectural influences and I think people often talk about trying to impress on a European stage. And that seems really abstract to me. Really, it's to impress visitors as well. No doubt about that. I see it in terms of the domestic audience for the King. He's creating this court that attracts people to him. So he was seen as the king that, broadly speaking, united the most powerful people in the kingdom's most powerful subjects to the extent that when he eventually dies in the Battle of Laudon, a huge swathe of the Scottish aristocracy dies with him on that battlefield because they've come to fight with him in contrast to where his father died, which was amidst a conflict amongst the Scottish aristocracy.
- [19:34]
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- [21:00]
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- [21:56]
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- [23:09]
Dr. William Hepburn
I think it's really testament to James IV's real understanding politically of what people wanted and how to bring them in. And when you see Sterling, you know, one of the big things that he does there is the Great hall, right? And this is completed sometime around 1503 and it's the largest that was ever built. You know, it's like 138ft long, it's 47ft tall. If you go in now, it's absolutely breathtaking, you know, let alone in the early 16th century. And it's nice there to see exactly the power that a structure like that has to bring people in. So short, foreign dignitaries, that's one thing. But the local Scottish aristocracy is probably going to be there as well. And one of the things that James does with it really well is you know, he hosts Parties and feasts and celebrations, you know, the kind of thing that makes you want to go die on a battlefield for someone. Right. I'm wondering if you could sort of talk to us a little bit about what kind of events we might see in a hall like this.
- [24:13]
William Hepburn
This is one of the things about James IV's court that strikes me as on one level he made it a fun place to be, I think, and that comes across pretty well. And yeah, the great hall, like you say, is spectacular not only when you're inside it, but you can see it from so far around. It's really the thing that stands out on the crag on which the castle is standing. And there are showpiece events during James reign ceremonies and so on, tournaments and that kind of thing. But there's also the day to day life in these palaces, which sees a constant stream of people coming and going to gamble games and presents to the King and this sort of thing. You see this in the financial records of the Crown in Scotland. There's just a sense of busyness and constant kind of social interaction going on. And I'd love to see a real detailed description of what went on in this hall at a feast or something. Doesn't really come across in the sources usually that way. Probably the best description we have of such a ceremony in this period is by an English herald at the wedding of James. But that's mostly describing Edinburgh, unfortunately for our purposes here. But it gives you a sense of the ritual, the etiquette in this situation, the visual splendor of the higher aristocracy of the kingdom being in their role as cupbearer and pantler to the King and so on and carrying out these household duties. So that kind of more formal thing certainly would have gone on there. But also from these accounts you just get a really nice insight into the King sitting, playing cards with people and that kind of thing.
- [25:43]
Dr. William Hepburn
They loved gambling. They're always gambling the royals.
- [25:46]
William Hepburn
Yeah. Also it is worth pointing out that they're playing up Stirling as this beautiful palace and everything. But William Dunbar, court poet, who wrote a lot of good stuff and he writes these kind of court poems from the kind of PR type ones that are obviously trying to project something outwards to these kind of almost inside joke feeling ones. And he writes one that is called Dunbar's Dirge to the King or We that are in Heaven's Glory. He's talking within the world of the courtiers how Stirling's a terrible place to be and they all want to be in Edinburgh and we feel so sorry for you that you're in Stirling. So it starts with we that are here in heaven's glory to you that are in purgatory, commend us on a heartly wise. I mean we folk of paradise and Edinburgh with all merriness to you at Stirling in distress and then goes on where nowhere pleasure nor delight is and so on. That gets the impression everyone hated being Stirling. There's much more God than Edinburgh in some ways might be true in the sense that that Edinburgh was the relatively small by European standards, but was the biggest city in Scotland and the most connected, where most of the exciting imports from abroad in terms of, you know, luxuries and so on would have been coming into. So in that sense there might be some truth to it, but you can't help but see a subtext in that poem that these courtiers are saying, oh, we're having a great time in Edinburgh, you're with the King in Stirling, but at the end of the day those people are with the King. That's probably where Tambara really wanted to be if he was writing that poem from his own perspective, I guess a.
- [27:06]
Dr. William Hepburn
Part of this, right. If the King is going to be at Sterling, if it is kind of going to be seen in contrast to a more cosmopolitan possibility in Edinburgh, you know that we have this ongoing work though, that allows for that. So, you know, by the time we get to James V, he's doing more work on the Royal Palace. And you know, this is when we get the additions of these gorgeous chambers for the King and Queen. And this tells us rather a lot about court life there because King and Queen's bedchambers, that's for private audiences, it's not just for sleeping. Right. And this is something that we see very commonly within the kind of a Renaissance or early modern world. And we see all of these like really incredible and elaborate decorations that get added as well. So, you know, we get this new facade that's got kind of Renaissance motifs, we throw some statues on there, there's fancy curly stonework and this is kind of showing this castle as connected with what's going on in terms of taste making in the rest of Europe. I'm wondering, do you think that that's us reading into it or is James V trying to say, yeah, I'm like other European monarchs and I too am quite a fancy lad indeed?
- [28:18]
William Hepburn
Yeah, I think with James V, that is easier to say more directly. I think all the kings are trying to impress on that stage at some level. But James V, yeah, there's Certainly very queer French influences there. And he's marrying a French bride and he goes to France. And I think that connection can be very clearly seen. And also, yeah, like you say, the detail in the decoration from that period is really striking not only in the exterior of the new palace building. This was, as I say, spectacular on the outside and inside. Some of the interior decorations, like the Stirling heads, are really one of the most amazing things when you visit Stirling castles again, to see them, not only the original wooden heads, which are these roundels that were installed in the ceiling representing classical figures, figures from the world of the Scottish court, other kind of luminaries of the time. So you can see the originals of those, but you can also see a recreated version of it that has been painted with the colors that they think it might have looked like at the time. And this is really a spectacular site that very clearly seems to be referring to and targeted at that international audience, at least alongside a domestic audience. But another interesting thing about that new palace setup is so the defining feature of James IV's space that he builds at Stirling is the Great hall, this big open space for lots of people to come and see the king, see the royal family. Whereas James V's palace, it's defined by more carefully organized gradation of space, having these different layers of access, if you like, within the King's chambers. People have seen that to reflect a change in the use of space in this period from a more open style associated, I think, with the French coming from the Burgundian court, of a more carefully organized internal space within the royal buildings.
- [30:08]
Dr. William Hepburn
So I just want to mention one of the coolest, I would call this Renaissance, even though I hate the term Renaissance. Right. But we see this, it really is spectacular display that happens specifically at Stirling that Mary Queen of Scots puts on in 1566. Right. So she has a huge party for James VI's baptism. And as a part of this, we have the first ever recorded fireworks display in Scotland. They build a mock castle and like a fake siege of it. It's this incredible display of wealth and power and pleasure as well that I think is incredibly important. And I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how display and fun really play into places like Sterling.
- [30:59]
William Hepburn
Yeah, absolutely fundamental to really, where's the borderline between, as we say, leisure and politics? These are all opportunities for people to be involved. They might not be sitting in the council chamber deciding on a piece of business or contributing to legislation and so on, or in the Parliament, but they might be Coming to some festival, some tournament or something, and being able to spend time in the presence of the king and other important people there. So, yeah, absolutely. I think that this is part of what this is doing. It's attracting people, bringing them in. And with them brought in, then there's opportunities for a negotiation, if you like, between the king and the others, that it's not a one sided thing. They're seeking something out of this, he's seeking something out of it. That's not to say that sometimes it isn't just purely people having fun, which I'm sure was an aspect of it as well. But that's what I find fascinating about this world. It's a world of domestic life, of fun and recreation and politics and religion, of course, all mixed in ways that personally I find fascinating.
- [32:14]
Kate Lister
I'll have to keep my voice down because right now I'm between the actual bedsheets of some of history's most famous figures. Want to know more about what Hitler might have been like in the sack? Or Julius Caesar? Or our very own Billy Shakespeare? You wouldn't believe the details I'm able to uncover here on Betwixt the Sheets, a podcast by History hit. Because sexuality explored through a historical lens can reveal a surprising amount about the human experience, warts and all, if you'll excuse the pun. And we don't just stop at sex. Expect outrageous scandals throughout the centuries as well as probing into everyday issues. The nitty gritty of human life that really connects us to all people throughout history. Join me, Kate Lister, every Tuesday and Friday on Betwixt the Sheets to find out more. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. Right, time to slide out of here and avoid the bedpan.
- [33:11]
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- [33:21]
William Hepburn
Did you get those social media posts.
- [33:22]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
Scheduled for the seal migration?
- [33:24]
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- [33:53]
Dr. William Hepburn
Now I've made us talk about all the fun stuff and parties and all of the. All the things that I really like about castles. But Stirling, of course, is also a fortress. It's not just a party place, right? And it's been the site of several major sieges over time. And you know, one of the most famous, I would think, is that of Edward I, who attacks from England in about 1304. I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit about that.
- [34:21]
William Hepburn
You're absolutely right. The central location of Stirling has made it a target of attack and siege across long periods of history. And when you go to Stirling, you do the guided tour and someone will take you out on the front of the castle and really just like point all around the landscape nearby to these famous battles and a lot of the biggest names in Scottish history, from Robert the Bruce to William Wallace to Edward I and to Bonnie Prince Charlie in a later period, these are all happening here. And of course, Edward I, this is one of the famous ones. And this is coming at the end of Edward's long campaign to subdue Scotland after he defeated William Wallace in battle at Falkirk, years before the army, which William Wallace is one of the leaders anyway. And this is the conclusion. There's a small garrison at Stirling holding out, and the leader of this garrison, or the one that's just by virtue of being there, but still answerable to someone higher than himself, to ask the leader of this garrison, it's called Sir William Olafin, and he has to ask his superior whether he's allowed to give up and surrender to Edward or whether he has to keep on defending it. But Edward refuses to allow this message to be sent out and then follows up with a three month siege in which, according to Geoffrey Barrow, who's written the classic book on Robert Bruce, he wrote, quote which every kind of siege engine, exposed, material the ingenuity of the time could devise had been used. So he really says they threw everything at this to really conclude this campaign and take out this last major stronghold of resistance to Edward. And then the garrison after that tried to surrender, surrender with honour, but were threatened again, apparently with disemboweling and hanging. And then they tried to surrender unconditionally, but Edward wouldn't allow them to go out until he'd used one of his brand new siege engine that he's built specifically for the task, which was called Warwolf, which I'm Scottish and I'm no fan of a guy who's called the Hammer of the Scots, but I'm big enough to admit that Werewolf's a cool name for a siege engine. So this brought about the end of the siege. But other English observers seemingly admired Oliphant's courage in resisting the siege. But Edward wanted to get the new toy tested, essentially. That brought an end to that. And then Edward I pursued, basically. Most of the Scottish leaders submitted within a few months. Of the siege, William Wallace was still in the run, and Edward pursued him relentlessly and eventually got him. We're at the bit in the Braveheart timeline where Mel Gibson screams freedom as he's been tortured in London. So at this point, basically, Scotland is now conquered. In Edward's view, it's now basically a land. It's not a kingdom anymore.
- [37:02]
Dr. William Hepburn
Well, I mean, I guess that having, you know, the biggest trebuchet ever built helps with that.
- [37:07]
William Hepburn
It's gonna help.
- [37:08]
Dr. William Hepburn
I'm not a fan of Edward. I myself, it's really hard to be, I think. But then we have kind of the tides turn a little bit 10 years later, because in 1314, then sterling gets attacked by Robert the Bruce during the Battle of Bannockburn. And I think that this is one of these things that is incredibly decisive when we're talking about sieges and Scottish history. Am I overstating that? How important is that as a battle?
- [37:35]
William Hepburn
The battle occurs just outside the castle, nearby the castle, but the castle is the trigger point for it. And so basically, in a situation that is so over the course of the wars of intense, we've talked about one siege, but the Stirling Castle chase changed hands back and forth a number of times. And so 10 years later, the time we're looking at are in Bannockburn. So Robert the Bruce has come to the fore, and now his power in the Scottish kingdom, his kingship, is in the ascendancy. He's in quite a strong position. But there are still some holdouts, still some places held by English forces in Scotland, with Stirling being one of the main ones. Him and his lieutenants are trying to deal with these places, and his brother is besieging the English garrison in Stirling Castle. So it's really rules reversed in that these are now the last holdouts of English power rather than the other way about. And the brother of Robert the Bruce, Edward Bruce, is besieging Stirling castle. And in 1313, he makes an agreement with the defenders that's seen as a very generous agreement that they would give up the castle if no one came to relieve them within a year. So if no one came to do battle within three miles of the castle within a year, they would give it up. So this was basically something that the English leadership couldn't really ignore. It was kind of the trigger point. But the two sides were heading for a clash here, probably of some sort anyway. But this kind of set up a situation where a pitched battle was hard to avoid for either side, despite Robert Bruce's usual strategy being much more guerrilla warfare. Focused. So Sterling in that sense was what led to Edward II coming up with his forces before that deadline to fight a battle and then a pitched battle is seen as. I'm not a military historian, but like a masterclass military tactics and so on by Bruce that won this pitched battle. And that was not the end by any means, but that was de facto control of Scotland was Bruce's more or less soon after that. And then ultimately leading years led to recognition from the English government that Scotland as an independent kingdom.
- [39:37]
Dr. William Hepburn
There's just so much to talk about at Sterling. I could keep you here all day, but I suppose a way to get us to some form of conclusion is, you know, you got Scott Stirling again, as we see by certainly the 16th and 17th centuries. It's this beautiful Renaissance side of pleasure we have. All these important things happen there. But James VI of Scotland then of course becomes James I and we have the united kingdoms of Scotland and England and off goes James down south to England. So very briefly, what happens to Sterling once James is off?
- [40:13]
William Hepburn
Yeah, so at that point, an independent Scottish court essentially ends. The court is in London. James 6th and 1st Barrow comes up to Scotland and the palace has become Hoyard House. It's still the royal palace in Scotland. That's the one that carries on being used. But other palaces fall out of use. And in the case of Stirling, so it became a military site in different ways and ultimately a barracks in the modern period. And so a lot of the features of this medieval Renaissance, whatever we want to call it kind of period, they're hidden or put into the background. It's still an amazing looking castle and sitting on that outcropping, I'm sure. But a lot of these features are hidden behind that military use. But from the 1990s to the 2010s, it's undergone refurbishment to restore it as a site that really celebrates that, that key stage in its building. And this included, controversially for the people of Stirling, the limewashing of the Great hall that we've talked about, James IV's Great Hall. So there's a really interesting discussion of this on a podcast called 99% invisible, where they talk about just how do you approach refurbishment or something like this? It's a bit like the question around classical statues that would have been all painted and everything, but people see that, they think, oh, this looks terrible. And this is like the case with Stirling Castle. So they had very good evidence of the lime washing. They found remains of this from the kind of period we talked about with James IV and James V, that sort of period. And that's why they chose to do that. But the people of Stirling, really, a lot of them reacted very badly to seeing this big, shining, sort of golden castle that they'd used to just be in a stone, gray stone surface. And apparently this is partly because even the people that were involved in that renovation, they admitted that they could have done better with the calm side of things because they had the castle under wraps for about 10 years apparently, and then suddenly just took that and there was this gold, shiny thing. So people didn't like it. But perhaps inevitably, because I'm a historian of the period, that is harking back to I like it. I think it looks striking and you can see the sort of dazzling thing from miles around and maybe people will come around to it a bit. But it's an interesting example of how do you go about decisions do you make when you're in charge of that kind of process?
- [42:26]
Dr. William Hepburn
Well, I'm afraid I'm Team Lywatch. I think most historians are actually right because I think having a big golden castle, it sort of does exactly what we're talking about. It shows this as an incredible piece of propaganda. You know, having a big gold castle sitting on a hill tells you everything you need to know about it. And you know, our romantic views about what a castle should look like doesn't really line up with what medieval and early modern kings would think. Well, William, thank you so, so much for coming on to chat to us today. This has been an absolute delight.
- [43:00]
William Hepburn
Thank you very much. It's been really enjoyable to chat with you. You.
- [43:08]
Dr. Eleanor Yonega
So from its early days as a strategic fortress to its zenith as a Renaissance palace and its current role as a national monument, Stirling Castle has been a constant presence in Scotland's story. It has witnessed coronations and baptisms, withstood sieges and hosted grand celebrations. Its walls have echoed with footsteps of kings and queens, ambassadors and armies. Through it all, Stirling Castle has stood as a symbol of Scottish royal power and national identity. Together, as visitors from around the world walk its ramparts and explore its halls, Stirling Castle continues to offer a tangible link to Scotland's rich and complex past. It remains as it has always been, a journey jewel in Scotland's crown. A place where history comes alive. My thanks to Dr. William Hepburn and to you for listening to Gone Medieval from History hit. In the next episode in this series, Matt will be finding out how to survive a castle siege at Carlisle Castle. Remember, you can enjoy unlimited access to award winning original TV documentaries, including Matt's series Castles that Make Britain and ad free podcasts by signing up@historyhit.com subscription as a special gift, we're offering 50% off your first three months when you use the Code Medieval and do follow Gone Medieval on Spotify, where you can leave comments and suggestions, or wherever you get your podcasts and tell all your friends and families that you've gone medieval until next time.
- [44:50]
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