Dunnottar Castle: The Crown Cromwell Never Found
StoneKeep Atlas
155 views
The twenty-fourth of May, 1652. The last royal flag flying anywhere in Scotland comes down over the North Sea, off the cliff at Dunnottar Castle. Cromwell's army has sat below it since September, and the surrender terms name what they came for: the crown, the sword and the sceptre of Scotland — hand them over, or give a good account of where they are. The English go in. The strongroom is empty.
This is a film about Dunnottar Castle, the castle nobody is remembered for getting into and everybody is remembered for getting out of. Forty-odd men held the strongest castle in the kingdom through a whole winter for a crown that was not there — because in the spring of 1652 the wife of the minister of Kinneff had already carried the Honours of Scotland out past the besieging army, and her husband had buried them under his church floor, where they stayed for eight years. He wrote the Countess Marischal a receipt on 31 March 1652. When the king came back, Parliament voted the minister's wife two thousand merks, "forthwith".
Then the rock's other exits. In 1685 the Privy Council emptied its prisons into one cellar here — 167 Covenanters, men and women, shut into the Whigs' Vault from 24 May, the same calendar date as the surrender. Twenty-five went out through the one window and down the cliff in the dark. The ones who refused the oath were marched to Leith and shipped for New Jersey; about seventy people on that ship died of fever on the crossing. The stone in the kirkyard counts nine dead, not five. And after 1716, when the Earl Marischal backed the wrong king, the castle itself went out through the gate in carts: roofs, lead, floors and timber, sold for parts by the York Buildings Company.
Nobody is remembered for getting into Dunnottar. Everyone is remembered for getting out.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The empty strongroom
1:32 A rock, not a wall
2:36 The chapel and the poem
4:02 Four hundred years of Keiths
5:45 The last flag
8:32 Two versions of one escape
12:00 The Whigs' Vault
15:09 Sold for parts
16:53 What is left
FULL GUIDE & EVERY SOURCE
Deep-dive article and references:
https://stonekeepatlas.com/castles/du...
PREFER TO LISTEN?
Also a podcast — StoneKeep Atlas: Castle Histories of Europe.
https://stonekeep-atlas.captivate.fm
ABOUT THE CHANNEL
StoneKeep Atlas tells the real stories of Europe's castles and fortresses.
https://stonekeepatlas.com · stonekeepatlas
KEY SOURCES
• Dunnottar Castle — the official history timeline, dunnottarcastle.co.uk
• The Preservation of the Honours of Scotland, 1651–52, ed. C. R. A. Howden, Scottish History Society vol. 26 (Edinburgh, 1896) — the siege narrative, Grainger's declaration of October 1660, the articles of capitulation (p. 136 n. 1)
• The Black Book of Kincardineshire: containing lists of the Covenanters confined in Dunnottar Castle in 1685 (Aberdeen, 1879) — the prisoner lists, the epitaph, the surrender terms, Grainger's receipt of 31 March 1652 and the Act of 11 January 1661
• Robert Wodrow, The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, vol. IV — the Whigs' Vault
• Blind Harry, The Wallace (c. 1477), in William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's modernisation (1722)
• Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality (1816), author's introduction — the meeting in Dunnottar kirkyard
• Historic Environment Scotland, Scheduled Monument SM986; Canmore/Trove site record 36992
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography — Christian Fletcher; George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal; James Keith
• Full bibliography in the article linked above.
IMAGE & MUSIC CREDITS
Freely licensed images are cropped, resized, graded and animated for this edit.
Historical works are public domain. Present-day photographs via Wikimedia Commons, with thanks:
• CC BY-SA 4.0 — Bewahrerderwerte, Dirtsc, Mariusz Matuszewski, PaulT, Rosser1954
• CC BY 4.0 — Rosser1954, Victuallers
• CC BY 2.0 — rboed*
Licence texts: creativecommons.org/licenses
Map geometry © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL — openstreetmap.org/copyright
Public-domain material via Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive: John Slezer, Theatrum Scotiae (1693); William Daniell (1822); the Jacobite broadside 'Dunotyr Castle in Merns'; an 18th-century plate of the ruin; The Black Book of Kincardineshire (1879) page scans; Howden's Papers relating to the preservation of the Honours (SHS 1896) page scans; Archibald Burns's 1860s photograph of the Regalia; Samuel Cooper's Oliver Cromwell; Sir Peter Lely's Charles II (Royal Collection); Sir Godfrey Kneller's James II; Sir Henry Raeburn's Sir Walter Scott; Placido Costanzi's George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal; Antoine Pesne's Field Marshal Keith; the 1780s portrait of Frederick the Great; the Edinburgh Castle view reused from EP-013.
Additional footage and stills licensed from Adobe Stock and Envato Elements; further images via Pexels (Clément Proust). Music: Envato Elements.
#DunnottarCastle #Cromwell #HonoursOfScotland #Covenanters #CastlesOfScotland #Scotland #StoneKeepAtlas
Dunnottar Castle: The Crown Cromwell Never Found
StoneKeep Atlas
155 views
The twenty-fourth of May, 1652. The last royal flag flying anywhere in Scotland comes down over the North Sea, off the cliff at Dunnottar Castle. Cromwell's army has sat below it since September, and the surrender terms name what they came for: the crown, the sword and the sceptre of Scotland — hand them over, or give a good account of where they are. The English go in. The strongroom is empty.
This is a film about Dunnottar Castle, the castle nobody is remembered for getting into and everybody is remembered for getting out of. Forty-odd men held the strongest castle in the kingdom through a whole winter for a crown that was not there — because in the spring of 1652 the wife of the minister of Kinneff had already carried the Honours of Scotland out past the besieging army, and her husband had buried them under his church floor, where they stayed for eight years. He wrote the Countess Marischal a receipt on 31 March 1652. When the king came back, Parliament voted the minister's wife two thousand merks, "forthwith".
Then the rock's other exits. In 1685 the Privy Council emptied its prisons into one cellar here — 167 Covenanters, men and women, shut into the Whigs' Vault from 24 May, the same calendar date as the surrender. Twenty-five went out through the one window and down the cliff in the dark. The ones who refused the oath were marched to Leith and shipped for New Jersey; about seventy people on that ship died of fever on the crossing. The stone in the kirkyard counts nine dead, not five. And after 1716, when the Earl Marischal backed the wrong king, the castle itself went out through the gate in carts: roofs, lead, floors and timber, sold for parts by the York Buildings Company.
Nobody is remembered for getting into Dunnottar. Everyone is remembered for getting out.
CHAPTERS
0:00 The empty strongroom
1:32 A rock, not a wall
2:36 The chapel and the poem
4:02 Four hundred years of Keiths
5:45 The last flag
8:32 Two versions of one escape
12:00 The Whigs' Vault
15:09 Sold for parts
16:53 What is left
FULL GUIDE & EVERY SOURCE
Deep-dive article and references:
https://stonekeepatlas.com/castles/du...
PREFER TO LISTEN?
Also a podcast — StoneKeep Atlas: Castle Histories of Europe.
https://stonekeep-atlas.captivate.fm
ABOUT THE CHANNEL
StoneKeep Atlas tells the real stories of Europe's castles and fortresses.
https://stonekeepatlas.com · stonekeepatlas
KEY SOURCES
• Dunnottar Castle — the official history timeline, dunnottarcastle.co.uk
• The Preservation of the Honours of Scotland, 1651–52, ed. C. R. A. Howden, Scottish History Society vol. 26 (Edinburgh, 1896) — the siege narrative, Grainger's declaration of October 1660, the articles of capitulation (p. 136 n. 1)
• The Black Book of Kincardineshire: containing lists of the Covenanters confined in Dunnottar Castle in 1685 (Aberdeen, 1879) — the prisoner lists, the epitaph, the surrender terms, Grainger's receipt of 31 March 1652 and the Act of 11 January 1661
• Robert Wodrow, The History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, vol. IV — the Whigs' Vault
• Blind Harry, The Wallace (c. 1477), in William Hamilton of Gilbertfield's modernisation (1722)
• Sir Walter Scott, Old Mortality (1816), author's introduction — the meeting in Dunnottar kirkyard
• Historic Environment Scotland, Scheduled Monument SM986; Canmore/Trove site record 36992
• Oxford Dictionary of National Biography — Christian Fletcher; George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal; James Keith
• Full bibliography in the article linked above.
IMAGE & MUSIC CREDITS
Freely licensed images are cropped, resized, graded and animated for this edit.
Historical works are public domain. Present-day photographs via Wikimedia Commons, with thanks:
• CC BY-SA 4.0 — Bewahrerderwerte, Dirtsc, Mariusz Matuszewski, PaulT, Rosser1954
• CC BY 4.0 — Rosser1954, Victuallers
• CC BY 2.0 — rboed*
Licence texts: creativecommons.org/licenses
Map geometry © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL — openstreetmap.org/copyright
Public-domain material via Wikimedia Commons and the Internet Archive: John Slezer, Theatrum Scotiae (1693); William Daniell (1822); the Jacobite broadside 'Dunotyr Castle in Merns'; an 18th-century plate of the ruin; The Black Book of Kincardineshire (1879) page scans; Howden's Papers relating to the preservation of the Honours (SHS 1896) page scans; Archibald Burns's 1860s photograph of the Regalia; Samuel Cooper's Oliver Cromwell; Sir Peter Lely's Charles II (Royal Collection); Sir Godfrey Kneller's James II; Sir Henry Raeburn's Sir Walter Scott; Placido Costanzi's George Keith, 10th Earl Marischal; Antoine Pesne's Field Marshal Keith; the 1780s portrait of Frederick the Great; the Edinburgh Castle view reused from EP-013.
Additional footage and stills licensed from Adobe Stock and Envato Elements; further images via Pexels (Clément Proust). Music: Envato Elements.
#DunnottarCastle #Cromwell #HonoursOfScotland #Covenanters #CastlesOfScotland #Scotland #StoneKeepAtlas