The last event of any historical interest or importance connected with this palace was the visit paid to it by Prince Charles Stewart in 1745; it was destroyed in the following year.

The beautiful old Gothic church of St. Michael is situated close to the palace.  Perhaps no tradition connected with this church is more interesting than the vision which is said to have appeared to James IV while praying within St. Catherine’s Aisle immediately before the Battle of Flodden.  According to Lindsay of Pitscottie, on whose authority the tale rests, the King, being “in a very sad and dolorous mood, was making his devotions to God to send him good chance and fortune in his voyage” when a man “clad in ane blue gown” appeared to him, and with little ceremony declared to the King that he had been sent to desire him “nocht to pass whither he purposed,” for if he did, things “would not fare well with him or any who went with him.”  How little this warning was heeded by the King is known to all readers of Scottish history.  The “ghost,” if it may be called so, was in all likelihood an attempt to frighten the King, and it is certain that the tale would never have gained the weird interest it possesses if Flodden Field had not proved so disastrous.  It has been helped to immortality by Sir Walter Scott, who in “Marmion” has invested Pitscottie’s antique prose with the charm of imperishable poetry.

[Illustration:  THE OLD CROSS WELL.]

One characteristic of the towns or villages in Scotland through which we passed was their fine drinking-fountains, and we had admired a very fine one at Falkirk that morning; but Linlithgow’s fountain surpassed it—­it was indeed the finest we had seen, and a common saying occurred to us: 

  Glasgow for bells,
  Linlithgow for wells.

Linlithgow has long been celebrated for its wells, some of them of ancient date and closely associated with the history of the town.  We came to an old pump-well with the date 1720, and the words “Saint Michael is kinde to straingers.”  As we considered ourselves to be included in that category, we had a drink of the water.

[Illustration:  THE TOWN HERALD, LINLITHGOW (A survival of the past)]

At the end of the village or town we passed the union workhouse, where the paupers were busy digging up potatoes in the garden, and a short distance farther on we passed a number of boys with an elderly man in charge of them, who informed us they came from the “institute,” meaning the workhouse we had just seen, and that he took them out for a walk once every week.  Presently we met a shepherd who was employed by an English farmer in the neighbourhood, and he told us that the man we had met in charge of the boys was an old pensioner who had served fifty-two years in the army, but as soon as he got his pension money he spent it, as he couldn’t keep it, the colour of his nose showing the direction in which it went.  It struck us the shepherd seemed inclined