it was again
and again by English hands that the fortifications were restored--such a
stronghold and point of defence being evidently of the first importance
to invaders, while much less valuable as a means of defence. In the year
1385 the walls must have encircled a large area upon the summit of the
rock, the _enceinte_ probably widening, as the arts of architecture and
fortification progressed, from the strong and grim eyrie on the edge of
the precipice to the wide and noble enclosure, with room for a palace as
well as a fortress, into which the great castles of England were
growing. The last erection of these often-cast-down walls was made by
Edward III on his raid into Scotland, and probably the royal founder of
Windsor Castle had given to the enclosure an amplitude unknown before.
The Scots king most likely had neither the money nor the habits which
made a great royal residence desirable, especially in a spot so easily
isolated and so open to attack; but he gave a charter to his burghers of
Edinburgh authorising them to build houses within the castle walls, and
to pass in and out freely without toll or due--a curious privilege,
which must have made the castle a sort of _imperium in imperio_, a town
within a town. The little closets of rooms which in a much later and
more luxurious age must have sufficed for the royal personages whom fate
drove into Edinburgh Castle as a residence, are enough to show how
limited were the requirements in point of space of the royal Scots. The
room in which James VI of Scotland was born would scarcely be occupied,
save under protest, by a housemaid in our days. But indeed the Castle of
Edinburgh was neither adapted nor intended for a royal residence. The
abbey in the valley, from which the King could retire on receipt of evil
tidings, where the winds were hushed and the air less keen, and gardens
and pleasant hillsides accessible, and all the splendour of religious
ceremonies within reach, afforded more fit and secure surroundings even
for a primitive court. The Parliament met, however, within the fortress,
and the courts of justice would seem to have been held within reach of
its shelter. And thither the burghers carried their wealth, and built
among the remains of the low huts of an earlier age their straight steep
houses, with high pitched roofs tiled with slabs of stone, rising gray
and strong within the _enceinte_, almost as strong and apt to resist
whatever missiles were possible