Linlithgow
2 of the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf carry an entry for Linlithgow. Both are reproduced below, so you can see where they agree and where they differ.
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
an , the county - town of Linlithgow- , Scotland; 16 miles W. of Edin- . Linlithgow Palace, mostly rebetween 1425 and 1628, was fired Hawley's dragoons in 1746. It was birthplace of James V. and Mary LINNÆAN SYSTEM, the sexual system of botany introduced by Linnæus, which, though unequaled for the aid it affords in finding the name of a flower, yet labors under the fatal defect that it is purely artificial. Previous to his time, Jung, rector of the gymnasium at Hamburg, who died in 1657, had introduced the Latin botanical nomenclature. Tournefort, who died in 1708, had been the first to classify plants into strictly defined genera. It remained for Linnæus to arrange them and define the several genera and species scientifically. He LINNÉ divided the vegetable kingdom into 24 classes. LINNÉ (lin'nā), KARL VON, commonly LINNÆUS, the greatest botanist of his age; born in Rashult, Sweden, May his devica in 13, 1707. He was the son of a clergyto use it man; educated at the grammar school e." The of Wexiö. He entered the University of improved Lund, where his botanical tastes were en- 5, etc., and couraged; and removed to Upsala in well as 1728, where he undertook the supervision etion may of the botanic garden, and became asthat of a sistant to the botanist Rudbeck. Aided not set by the Academy of Sciences at Upsala Line of me Linné made a journey through Lapland, s to be pris the result of his travels was "Flora Lapon of read ponica," published in 1735. In this year he went to the University of Harderwyk in Holland and took an M. D. degree; ID OTE, the afterward visited Leyden, where he pubed. Linsee lished the first sketch of his "Systema of linole Naturæ" and "Fundamenta Botanica." ads, about In 1736 he visited England, went to the glycer Paris in 1738, and afterward settled in aken as the Stockholm as a physician. He became Brying oils, Professor of Medicine at Upsala in 1741, ing up int and then of botany and natural history; ons mass was made a Knight of the Polar Star en the oil losas about with the rank of nobility. The great merit of Linné as a botanist was that he arranged plants on a simple system of sexual relationship and prepared the way for the more natural and satisfac- 3, scarcely tory classification which has superseded the basi the Linnæan system. Among his works ishes. are "Genera Plantarum" (1737); "Clasof sulph ses Plantarum" (1738); "Flora Suecica" ducts, and (1745); "Fauna Suecica" (1746); "Philosophia Botanica" (1751); and the al of the "Species Plantarum" (1753). He died 117 mil in Upsala, Jan. 10, 1778. As a pl
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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, The Queen sits lone in Lithgow pile, And weeps the weary day. 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.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The palace the 1910 account describes is still a roofless ruin on its promontory above Linlithgow Loch, with Queen Margaret's Bower and the courtyard fountain intact, now cared for by Historic Environment Scotland; Collier's account of the 1746 burning by Hawley's dragoons still stands. What has changed is the map: the county of Linlithgowshire that Collier's named in 1921 was formally retitled West Lothian in the same period, and the county itself was swept away in the 1975 local-government reorganisation, so the town is now the administrative centre of a West Lothian council area rather than a shire town. The town has also grown into an Edinburgh commuter base of roughly 14,000 people, served by the main Edinburgh-Glasgow railway and, since the Millennium Link restoration completed in 2001, by a fully navigable Union Canal again. St Michael's Kirk beside the palace gained a modern aluminium crown spire in 1964, the most conspicuous addition to the skyline since these entries were written.
Written for this edition, 2026.