Stirling Castle A few structures of the fourteenth century remain, while the outer defences fronting the town date from the early eighteenth century. Before the union with England, Stirling Castle was also one of the most used of the many Scottish royal residences, very much a palace as well as a fortress. Several Scottish Kings and Queens have been crowned at Stirling, including Mary, Queen of Scots, in 1542, and others were born or died there. There have been at least eight sieges of Stirling Castle, including several during the Wars of Scottish Independence, with the last being in 1746, when Bonnie
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley Elder advocated Anglo-Scottish union through the marriage of Mary, Queen of Scots and Prince Edward. His advice to Henry VIII in 1543, was termed the "Advice of a Redshank". Another schoolmaster to the young heir was Arthur Lallart, who would later be interrogated in London for having gone to Scotland in 1562. Henry was said to be strong, athletic, skilled in horsemanship and weaponry, and passionate about hunting and hawking. His youthful character is captured somewhat in a letter of March 1554 to Mary I of England from Temple Newsam, where he writes about making a map, the "Utopia Nova",