Page:The castellated and domestic architecture of Scotland from the twelfth to the eighteenth century (1887) - Volume 2.djvu/344

 FOURTH PERIOD 328 INVERUGIE CASTLE south end of the cope is another figure, but so much mutilated as to be now unintelligible. Preserved in an adjoining cottage is the fine oak coat of arms,, shown on Fig. 776. It is, believed that these arms occupied the panel shown in Fig. 779, between the hall windows. It was latterly, with a fine eye for the fitness of things, cut up to form part of a pig's trough, from which it was rescued by the old woman in whose possession it was when our sketch was made. Traces of gold and colour are still to be found on it. The arms and initials are those of Earl William Marischal and his second wife Anna, daughter of the Earl of Morton. Earl William succeeded in 1635, and died in 1671. The various local writers who have noticed Inverugie inform us that the principal part of the castle is supposed to have been built by George, Earl Marischal, the founder of the college of that name in Aberdeen, who died in 1623. There is nothing inconsistent with this statement in the style of the building, which indicates that it is an erection of the end of the sixteenth or beginning of the seventeenth century. But however this may be, it is quite certain from what is said above that his grandson William carried on some of the works. The lands of Inverugie anciently belonged to the family of Cheyne. About the middle of the fourteenth century they passed by marriage into the possession of the Keith family, and again about 1538, they passed in the same way into the possession of William, Earl Marischal. Part of the castle is supposed to have been built about 1380 by John de Keith, who married the last of the Cheynes, but no portion of the existing structure can be referred to such an early period, and still less is there to support the local belief that a " Cheyne Tower" erected either in the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth century forms part of the present castle. / BIRSAY PALACE, ORKNEY. The traveller is surprised to find, at the extreme north-west corner of the mainland of Orkney, twenty miles from Kirkwall, and quite isolated from all centres of population, this large and imposing edifice. It was built by Robert Stewart, Earl of Orkney, a natural brother of Queen Mary, who established in Orkney a kind of subordinate kingdom, and exercised great severity on the inhabitants in order to extort from them funds wherewith to gratify his princely tastes and expenses. Both he and his son Earl Patrick (who built the palace at Kirkwall) indulged in the erection of fine buildings, and in otherwise attempting to rival Royalty. At last their exactions became so intolerable that the Government had to take the matter up, and it is said that the inscription placed by Earl Robert on Birsay Palace had an influence in bringing his son to the