Page:Old Castles.djvu/40

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32
Carlisle Castle.

not unhonoured saints, this ambitious king held a parliament within these walls.

A year before this Wallace himself had appeared before these walls demanding the surrender of the city, but once more we find the old city awake and vigilant in all needful dues for its own defence, and the brave Wallace himself retired from before it.

In 1300 Edward was again here on his route to Scotland, attended by his nobles and his army; and again in 1306, the very year his grand adversary, Robert Bruce, was crowned king of Scotland, and one year after the noble Wallace had been "hung, drawn, and quartered," most likely in his august presence, in his English capital.

This last time Carlisle was the appointed rendezvous of his army; and he himself was accompanied by his second young queen, Margaret of France, and his son Edward, Prince of Wales, eighteen years old that year. Here also, at the same time, were assembled nineteen bishops, and between fifty and sixty mitred abbots, the archbishop of York, and a great number of barons, with the Cardinal d'Espagnol, the Pope's legate. The redoubtable John Hilton, Bishop of Carlisle was at that time governor of the castle and factotum of the king in this border country, and during his stay here Edward was a frequent guest at Linstock castle, the Bishop's residence. All the succeeding winter of this year, and till the July of the following, the time of his death, the king and court remained either here or at Lanercost, and another Parliament was held here on the 20th of January, 1307. This was in all probability the acme of the great days of our castle–the