LINLITHGOW PALACE 495 THIRD PERIOD The apartment at the north-west angle was the royal bedroom. The bow window to the north, with fine groined vault (Figs. 414 and 415), was probably an oratory adjoining the bedroom, but has been altered and destroyed by the operations in 1619- There is a small room under the passage, between the bedroom and drawing-room, entering by a trap stair from the bedroom. It is . fitted up with bins like a wine-cellar. James HI. is said to have been concealed here. When James vi. visited Linlithgow in 1617 he found the north side of the quadrangle in a ruinous and tottering condition, and ordered it to be rebuilt. The new building seems to have been carried out forthwith, as it bears the dates of 1619 and 1620. This building is a double tene- ment, having a central wall, and the rooms being lighted from windows on one side only (see the Plans). The basement floor contains six rooms, apparently bedrooms. On the first floor there is a hall 72 feet long by 16 feet wide, called the Banqueting-hall. It has two large fireplaces carved in the Renaissance style of the rest of the building. The rooms next the court appear to have been bedrooms, and each is provided with a small circular closet or garde-robe. The plan of the second floor shows (as above mentioned) the upper part of the Parliament Hall. It also shows the continuation of the chapel, with the openings from the corridor into it. The other apart- ments were apparently bedrooms or sitting-rooms, but the floors are now nearly all gone. The angle stair turrets are continued to the roof, and give access to the battlements. These run all round the building in the form of wide stone gutters, which could be speedily manned, and defended when required. The angle, towers are carried a story higher than the rest of the building. The north wing has five stories in the height of the three stories of the other sides. The sketches of the building show the different styles of the various parts. Those of the east front (Figs. 416 and 417) show the great entrance gateway with its rich decoration. The cusped work over the gateway has some affinity with that of the windows of Stirling Palace, but the niches and figures are of an earlier date, and have none of the classic feeling of those at Stirling. Mr. Joseph Robertson, referring to the interior of this gateway (Fig. 425), finds from the Records of the year 1535 that "the now empty niches above the grand gateway in the eastern side of the quadrangle were filled with statues of a pope to repre- sent the Church ; a knight to indicate the Gentry; and a labouring man to symbolise the Commons each having a scroll above his head, on which were inscribed a few words of legend, now irretrievably lost. This group," continues Mr. Robertson, " together with the group of the Salutation of the Virgin upon the other side of the quadrangle (Fig. 418), and certain unicorns and a lion upon the outer gateway, were brilliantly painted."
