Old Parliament Hall Edinburgh

In the Old Parliament Hall, or Banqueting Hall, on the southern side of the quadrangle, the earlier meetings of the Scots Estates, or Parliament, are believed to have been held.

In this hall met the first Parliament of James II, March 20, 1437 and also here too, in 1440, was held the " Black Dinner" given by Chancellor Crichton and Governor Livingston to William, Earl of Douglas, and his brother, after which the pair of youths were hurried to execution.

Here also many banquets were held, among others those given to Charles I in 1633 on his first visit to Scotland, and, exactly fifteen years later, by the Earl of Leven to Cromwell and Heselrige. From the windows of this hall James IV was to witness the tournaments that took place on the Barras or Jousting Ground at King's Stables immediately below.

Since its restoration the Hall has become a museum of arm our, most effectively arranged on the walls and floor, among the exhibits being the gun - carriage on which the body of Queen Victoria was conveyed from Osborne. The windows are tilled with the arms of Scottish Sovereigns and nobles.

Another interesting collection is housed in the Scottish Naval and Military Museum, adjoining Crown Square. Established in 1933, it contains a unique array of relics, portraits, medals, colours, trophies, and uniforms of the Scottish lighting forces through the centuries. The series of oak statuettes representing the development of Scottish uniforms, by Pilkington Jackson, are very noteworthy.

In normal times access is given, under the direction of a guide, to the remains of David II’s Tower, built in 1358 and, after remaining hidden for 300 years, rediscovered in sit 1912, to the vaulted reservoirs that contained the Castles water-supply, and, below the Parliament Hall, to a. double series of stone - vaulted chambers of great antiquity, including that occupied by the condemned Earl of Argyll. These dungeons, whose walls and windows are visible from the level of Johnston Terrace, were used as places of confinement for French prisoners during the last decades of the eighteenth and the first of the nineteenth century, as described R. L. Stevenson’s novel, St. Ives.

After the capture of the Castle by Randolph by escalade, Robert Bruce ordered it to be dismantled, but the English rebuilt it during the reign of David II. A second time the Fortress was recaptured, by the address of `William, Lord Douglas, and of Willian1 Bullock, an ex-priest, Bullock pretended to be a merchant with a cargo of wine, and while the carts were delivering what was ordered Bullock contrived to overturn one of them in such a position as to prevent the portcullis from descending. The Scots then rushed in and made themselves masters of the place.

The higher parts of the Castle command the best views of the city and its neighbourhood not only on account of their elevation, but because the outlook is, as a rule, less obscured by smoke. The prospect in clear weather presents a wonderful combination of different types of landscape. From the King’s Bastion we can pass, in quest of these changing views, to the battlemented roof of the Argyll Tower, and then descend to a lower range of elevation, the seaward and landward sides of the Esplanade, which afford contrasting pictures if city and country bounded by distant mountains.

Looking over the low wall of the Esplanade, we see immediately below us Johnston Terrace, at the west end of which are the city’s Public Health Chambers and the Married Soldiers’ Barracks. In the roadway wall of these barracks is a tablet bearing the inspiration, “Erected on a site near the extremity of the Ancient Town Wall built in the reign of James II, King of Scots, A.D. 1450 for the protection of Edinburgh against invasion.”