Photo © Mark Dotson                                       enlarge

Built around 1200, there's not much left of the castle but it's been the scene of some pretty gruesome events at the time of the Reformation. 

It was here in front of the castle in 1546 that the protestant reformer, George Wishart, was burnt at the stake for heresy, as the residing Cardinal Beaton looked on. However, Wishart had been a friend of John Knox, the Protestant reformer, and it wasn't long before John Knox exacted revenge for his friends death. Less than three months later, Cardinal Beaton was stabbed to death, his body displayed from the battlements before being dropped into the "bottle dungeon" below, a 24-foot pit hewn out of of solid rock. 

John Knox and his fellow perpetrators then held the castle for over a year, and you can enter the secret passage they dug in hope that it might aid their escape. However, a year after taking the Castle, the French attacked, captured the castle and Knox was carted off  to work as a galley slave, although in later years he went on to play an important role in Protestant reformation in Scotland.