Dance Loch Leven Castle 3862

There is an old saying, “Those never got luck who come to Loch Leven” and for a good many of Loch Leven Castle’s unwilling guests that was all too true.

Loch Leven, in Kinross-shire, is dotted with seven islands. St. Serf’s, the largest, contains the ruined Priory of Portmoak and on Castle Island is Loch Leven Castle.

All that remains of the castle today is the ancient tower and a few crumbing ruins., It was a royal residence in 1257 when Alexander III and Margaret of England were taken by force from the castle to Stirling by the factions warring for control over the king who had not yet reached his majority, Alexander having been only eight years of age when he was crowned in 1249 and ten when he was married to Margaret.

The island castle was besieged by the English in 1301 and again in 1335 by Edward Balliol, the English supported son of John Balliol, “Toom Tabard”. (See “The Auld Alliance”) After Robert II came to the throne in 1371 he granted Loch Leven Castle to Sir William Douglas of Lugton.

Loch Leven Castle was the prison of various illustrious Scots and one English earl. Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan, whose brutish activities earned him the title “The Wolf of Badenoch”, was imprisoned in the castle by David II, along with his father, the future Robert II. Archibald, 7th Earl of Douglas, was held there in 1429 during the reign of James I. Patrick Graham, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who took the side of Rome in the matter of the Pope’s rights as opposed to those of James III, was held prisoner in the tower on Castle Island but, as a religious, was allowed to die on St. Serf’s Island in 1478. The English captive was Thomas Percy, 7th Earl of Northumberland (1528–1572), an active supporter of Queen Mary whose actions naturally enraged Elizabeth of England. He was held there for three years before being returned to Elizabeth’s hands for trial and eventual beheading at York in 1572.

Loch Leven Castle’s most famous prisoner was Mary who was taken there after the defeat of her forces at Carberry on 17 June, 1567. Her gaoler was Lady Margaret Erskine, widow of Robert Douglas, formerly mistress of Mary’s father, James V, and the mother of Mary’s half-brother, James Stewart, Earl of Moray. Mary signed her abdication while at Loch Leven on 4 July, 1567, and Moray became Regent. On 2 May, 1568, the queen with the aid of young Willy Douglas, an orphaned cousin of the family, and George Douglas, son of Lady Margaret, escaped from the island. The story of the queen’s daring escape is told by Sir Walter Scott in his novel The Abbot. Mary’s Hamilton and Campbell supporters met the army of the Earl of Moray at Langside on 13 May and after that defeat the queen rode south and crossed by boat into England and an unlawful imprisonment from which she was only released by her execution nineteen years later.