Linlithgow

a country town eighteen miles west of Edinburgh. It is prominent in history and literature, owing to the fact that it was long a favorite royal residence. The ruins of Linlithgow Palace are considered the finest of the kind in Scotland. The palace stood on a promontory extending into a lake. It was almost square in outline. The buildings inclosed a court ninety-one by eighty-eight feet in size, in the center of which stood a fine fountain. At every corner there was a tower with an interior spiral staircase. The northwest angle is crowned by a little eight-sided turret, known as "Queen Margaret's Bower," the name arising from the tradition that she sat and watched there for the return of her husband, James IV, from the fatal field of Flodden. In his Marmion Scott refers to this tradition,

James V and his daughter, Mary, Queen of Scots, were born in this palace. The Scottish Parliament occasionally held its meetings here. In 1645-6 the year of the plague, the university of Edinburgh took refuge at Linlithgow. In 1745 Prince Charlie passed through the town. The palace was burned by Hawley's dragoons in the following year.