Stirling Castle and expanded his father's building programme, creating the centrepiece of the castle, the Royal Palace, built under the direction of Sir James Hamilton of Finnart and masons brought from France. James V also died young, leaving unfinished work to be completed by his widow, Mary of Guise. His infant daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, was brought to Stirling Castle for safety, and crowned in the chapel royal on 9 September 1543. She too was brought up here, until she was sent to Inchmahome Priory, and then to France in 1548. In the 1550s, during the Regency of Mary of Guise,
Whorlton Castle held on to the castle, until a dispute between heirs in 1541 led to it becoming a possession of the Crown. King Henry VIII of England later granted the castle and estate to Matthew Stewart, 4th Earl of Lennox, whose eldest son was Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. Margaret Douglas, Countess of Lennox, wrote to Mary, Queen of Scots in the autumn of 1561, possibly from Whorlton Castle, to propose a marriage between Mary and her son Darnley. Although local tradition claims that the castle was where their marriage contract was signed in 1565, this is erroneous; the contract was actually