Unless equipped with a good knowledge of Scottish history, the average tourist wandering through Fife will come upon Falkland Palace with surprise. Its situation is so remote from any centre of importance, it stands upon no great river affording an outlet to the sea, and never being a stronghold of any sort it remains at the base instead of the top of the hills among which it is built. Though elevated to the proud position of a royal burgh in 1458, Falkland can to-day be scarcely designated by any other title than that of a fair-sized village, so that the presence of the stately palace, ruined though it is, partakes of the nature of the unexpected.

The Gateway of Falkland
Palace.

Being built purely for pleasure and convenience, and with no thought of safety, the builders of the palace indulged in greater beauty of decoration than is to be seen in almost any other palace in Scotland. It suggests the dignity of a graceful French chateau, with its pilasters, bas-reliefs, statues, and canopied niches. Of [pg 92] the three sides of which the palace once consisted, only two remain, one of these being much ruined. But the south wing which has always remained more or less intact, is sufficient to prove how far from barbarous was the taste of the later Stuart monarchs.

Before the palace was erected a castle stood close to the site of the present building. It had long been a possession of the Earls of Fife, till in the fourteenth century it descended to an heiress who had no children. She bestowed the castle upon Robert Duke of Albany, the brother of the inefficient King Robert III. Upon Albany rests the dreadful charge of murdering his young nephew, the Duke of Rothesay, by starving him to death in the castle at Falkland. Rothesay was young and wild, and had annoyed his uncle by getting himself made Guardian of the Realm, a post desired by Albany. After involving Scotland in war with England, due to his imprudence in jilting the daughter of the Earl of March, who succeeded in obtaining an English army in his support, Rothesay was captured on his way to St. Andrews by his uncle, who, it is said, had his father's authority to do so. Taken to Falkland Castle the Prince never came out alive, dying of slow starvation according to one account, and of dysentery by another. It is evident that Albany was suspected of murder, for he took the trouble to be officially acquitted of any part in his death. Only grassy mounds now indicate the position of this castle, which must have been, according to the investigations of Lord Bute, of considerable extent.

The execution of Albany's son as a traitor made Falkland Crown prop............