THE EDINBURGH CASTLE MYST E RY
In Victorian times, the tour guides at Edinburgh Castle had quite a startling story to tell. In 1830, a coffin had been found immured in one of the walls of the Royal Palace: it contained the skeleton of a new-born babe, wrapped in a velvet cloth embroidered with the letters ‘JR’. Since it was well known that Mary Queen of Scots had given birth to the future James VI in these very apartments, this extraordinary discovery would imply that the true child of Mary had died in infancy, and that the little prince was a changeling introduced into the royal crib. Various conspiracy theorists have speculated that the Earl and Countess of Mar donated their second son to act the part of the little prince, or that an empty crib had been lowered from the Castle using a long rope, to be filled with a healthy child purchased for a few shillings in one of the dens in the Cowgate; in contrast, the mainstream historians have shunned the story as a fabrication, invented by the tour guides to astound their credulous Cockney visitors.
Interestingly, some research demonstrates that the story of the ‘Edinburgh Castle Mystery’ has more truth behind it than previously presumed. The Archives of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland hold some very interesting early documents concerning this mysterious matter. At the meeting of 14 February 1831 was read an account by Captain JE Alexander of the “discovery in the wall of the ancient Palace of the Castle of Edinburgh, of the remains of a child, which were wrapped in a shroud of Silk and Cloth of Gold, having the letter J embroidered thereupon”. A rib and some other bones from the child were presented to the Society by the Reverend James Chapman of Edinburgh Castle at the same meeting. Part of the In a letter dated 16 July 1831, Sergeant Major Dingwall, late of the Scots Greys, sent a part of the coffin and some bones to the Society, adding the valuable detail that they had been found on 11 August 1830. The 1849 catalogue of the Society’s museum does not mention either coffin or bones, but instead includes a portion of the shroud in which the remains of the infant had been wrapped, donated by Captain Alexander. This item has since been lost.
