BINNOCHS STRATAGEM. — LINLITHGOW. 141 



port amounted to one hundred and sixty-five. The neighboiu-ing territory 

 abounds in coal and freestone, and, gently sloping to the shore, 



" Villa and hamlet, tower and sheltering wood, 

 Refiected gleam in Fortha's winding flood," 



About three miles inland is the ancient capital of the district, the vene- 

 rable town of Linlithgow, the favoured retreat of her sovereigns, and one 

 of the most happily situated towns in Scotland. The interior is a rich treat 

 for tlie painter and antiquary. The houses — where they have escaped the 

 mutilations of modern improvement — exhibit a style of architecture still to be 

 seen in the old towns of Saxony, the picturesque wooden structure, with its 

 carved panels, jutting porticos, massy balustrades, and projecting roofs ; but 

 which are all fast disappearing in Scotland, where the freestone quarry has long 

 superseded the forest in the way of domestic architecture. The houses are 

 dark, and in many respects inconvenient, but they talk intelligibly of genera- 

 tions past — of the sorrow or sunshine to wliich they afforded shelter or display 

 — of the thousand guests that each, like a caravansera, has lodged for a time, 

 and then dismissed to that lowlier mansion from which no tenant returns. 

 The very names, symbols, and initials — the one supplanting the other as race 

 followed race — give an interest to the ancient log-tenements of Linlithgow 

 which no modern architecture could awaken. In its palmy day, while enjoying 

 the partial favours of a court, and the accumulating riches of a prosperous 

 trade, it was much more populous than at the present date, when its original 

 advantages have been usurped by younger colonies, 



" That, rising into fame and enterprise, 

 Outrival her who taught them first to rise. 

 While wan, and widowed of her former state, 

 The Queen of all the land lies desolate." 



Among the ancient features of the place, the original gate is not the least 

 interesting for the stratagem by which it was thrown open to the Bruce. This 

 took place about the same time that the castle of Edinburgh, as already stated, 

 was surprised by Randolph. The English garrison, then in the castle or pele of 

 Linlithgow, were in the habit of receiving their supplies of forage from a peasant 

 in the envii-ons, named Binnoch, who, though willing to convert the produce 

 of his fields into money, could not forget that his country groaned under a 

 foreign yoke, and that he who with one hand paid him for his provender, 

 brandished in the other the ensigns of oppression. Having loaded his wain 



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