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An unlikely home for a King of France: the thread about the Palace of Holyroodhouse

This thread was originally written and published in September 2022.

Given that the Palace of Holyroodhouse was getting more attention than it is used to in the week that this thread was first written, it seemed like a good idea to take a brief delve into its history of royal residents and one who is highly remarkable but far less well remembered than others.

The Palace of Holyroodhouse, lithograph after J. D. Harding, c. 1850. CC-by-3.0 University of Edinburgh Walter Scott Image Collection

The palace is well known to be the official residence of the British Monarch in Scotland, but that’s a role that it has only held for just over 100 years, with King George V conferring the status upon it in 1922. It’s also well known that it long served as a royal residence for the Scottish monarchy going back to medieval times, with this situation ending in 1603 when King James VI left it, Edinburgh and Scotland for London and the English throne. James was the palace’s longest term royal resident, being principally based there from his coming of age in 1579 until he left 24 years later. He had promised to return to Edinburgh every 3 years, but did not keep his word and would not return until 1617 (and then after that, never again). There is therefore a period of four centuries to be accounted for between James’ departure and George’s designation.

The young King James VI, painting by Adrian van Son from the collection in Pittencrieff House in Fife

After James, Royal visits were infrequent. Charles I stayed here when he came to Edinburgh in 1633 for his showpiece Scottish coronation, the façade being remodelled in his honour. He returned to the palace in the turbulent year of 1641, and in 1646, conferred it to one of his principal Scottish supporters; James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Hamilton. The hereditary role of Keeper of the palace is one that the Dukes of Hamilton hold hold to this day. It was badly damaged in 1650 by the occupying troops of Oliver Cromwell after their defeat of the Scottish Army at Dunbar. The picture below shows the palace at it was in 1649 following the remodelling for Charles.

The west range of the palace drawn around 1649 by James Gordon of Rothiemay, prior to reconstruction in the 1670s.

After the Restoration in 1660, repairs were made to the palace to allow it to be occupied by Charles II as required and to be a meeting place for his Scottish Privy Council. It was reconstructed between 1670-79 by and it is rumoured that funds and materials for this project were diverted towards the construction of Royston House. The King however did not intend to reside there himself, rather it was to be a seat of his power by proxy in the country, the seat of not just the Privy Council but also the residence of the Lord High Commissioner for Scotland. In 1679, this was James, Duke of Albany, the future King James VII (II of England). His daughter Anne, the future Queen Anne, was also resident with him. When James ascended to the throne in 1685, he set up a Jesuit college in the grounds. The following year he had the Protestant congregation that was worshipping in the Holyrood Abbey Kirk evicted and converted that building to a ceremonial Chapel Royal for his newly created Order of the Thistle. Both of these acts provoked outrage amongst the Edinburgh mob and in 1688 they would destroy the college and desecrate the chapel and its tombs following William of Orange’s taking of the throne.

Engraving after John Elphinstone esq. of the Palace and Abbey from the southeast around 1740. The roof of the Abbey Kirk would collapse in 1786 under its own weight. © Royal Collections Trust, RCIN 702898

Following the abolition of the separate Scottish Privy Council on the Act of Union in 1707, the primary function of the palace as a centre of government ceased to be and it was increasingly turned over to grace-and-favour use by the Scottish nobility. This was interrupted briefly by a royal visit in 1745 when a certain man with claim to being a future King Charles III paid an uninvited visit – Charles Edward Stuart, better known as Bonnie Prince Charlie.

An imagined scene of Charles Edward Stuart holding court at Holyroodhouse during the occupation of 1745. A highly romanticised 1880 illustration by William Brassey Hole © Edinburgh City Libraries

Jacobite excitement aside, for the next 100 or so years, British monarchs were uninterested in what was an increasingly decrepit old building in a bad neighbourhood in town; hemmed in on 2 sides by the increasingly undesirable tenements of the Canongate, on another by an irrigated meadow for the settling of sewage as fertiliser and all around by brewing on an industrial scale. It was not until 1822 that a reigning British monarch would visit, the first since Charles I in 1641; King George IV lodged in the far more comfortable surroundings of Dalkeith Palace, but was given a tour of the ancient seat of Royalty and held a reception there. The Palace would not begin to be rehabilitated until the reign of Queen Victoria, its resident nobility being slowly turfed out and it was gradually repaired, restored and improved. But no monarch or senior royal has made Holyrood a permanent home since James VI left over 420 years ago…

Scene Outside Holyrood Palace, the Arrival of George IV, watercolour sketch by Sir John James Stuart. CC-by-NC National Galleries Scotland

Or have they? When I say “no monarch or senior royal” I mean of the British royal family, because you may be surprised to learn that the palace’s 2nd longest royal resident was none other than Charles Philippe, Comte d’Artois, younger brother of King Louis XVI and later King Charles X of France! This future monarch would spend 7 years at Holyrood from 1796 to 1803 with his mistress, Louise de Polastron, following his flight from the French Revolution. When he arrived in Edinburgh, reputedly half the city turned out to welcome him, despite his wish for a low-key reception. He would find Holyrood’s legal status as a debtor’s sanctuary particularly suited to his lifestyle choices.

Charles X as Count of Artois in 1798. Portrait by Henri-Pierre Danloux

Nearly thirty years later, he would return to Holyrood as the recently deposed King Charles X following the Second French Revolution, arriving in 1830 and staying this time for two years. He lived with his young grandson, Henri d’Artois, Count of Chambord and Duke of Bordeaux, who had very briefly spend a few days on the French throne as the last Bourbon king. Charles’ son Louis-Antoine, Duke of Angoulême and his wife Marie-Thérèse (who, as daughter of Louis XVI of France and Marie Antoinette was also Charles’ niece) also fled the wrath of the French republic and made their home in town, staying at 21 Regent Terrace (now 22), overlooking the palace. Marie-Caroline de Bourbon-Sicile, Duchess de Berry and sister-in-law of Louis-Antoine, lived a few doors down at number 11 (now 12) at this time.

22 Regent Terrace. CC-by-SA 4.0 SylviaStanley

While Edinburgh provided a safe retreat for the French royals, they reputedly found the Scots “tiresome and odd.” They kept themselves distant from their host city, snubbed offers from its institutions and despaired at the prevalence of Sabbatarianism. In turn were an object of fascination for the locals and the Scottish nobility were “astonished” by their “gastronomic powers“. City caricaturist John Kay captured Charles in 1796, walking hand in arm with Lord Adam Gordon, Commander-in-Chief of the Army in Scotland and Governor of Edinburgh Castle.

Charles as Comte d’Artois (right) and Lord Adam Gordon. Caricature by John Kay, 1796. © National Portrait Gallery, NPG D15136

Charles and his family left Edinburgh for Austria on September 18th 1832, his departure being a public spectacle, as the young Henri in particular was a favourite in the city. The Scotsman reported that “white gloves, white ribbons and white favours of various kinds were worn by a large proportion of the people assembled.” Many white flags can be seen in the illustration below also, these were not a symbol of surrender, but the flag of the Bourbon restoration. The departure was from the Trinity Chain Pier on the 9AM steamer , the SS United Kingdom, from Newhaven to Hamburg, which is what can be seen in the background of the painting.

The departure of Charles X to Austria with his grandson Henri, 18 September 1832. It is probably the Duke and Duchess of Angoulême stepping out of the carriage. Painting by Charles Achille d’Hardiviller

Charles was now gone for good, but did leave one lasting mark upon the city from his residency. Disliking the attention he attracted from locals wherever we went, he had William Playfair include a convenient gated path through Regent Gardens to allow him to walk unmolested to hear Mass at St. Mary’s Chapel (now St. Mary’s Metropolitan Cathedral) at Picardy Place. Whether that story is apocryphal or not, there are indeed gates at both the north and south end of the western boundary of Regent Gardens and pleasant paths laid out between the two.

Regent Gardens and the western gates, marked on the 1849 OS Town Plan of Edinburgh. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

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The Burning of the “Brilliant”: the thread about the loss of a Leith steam packet and the death of Captain Wade

The PS Brilliant was one of the earliest steamships in Scotland, built by James Lang in Dumbarton for the Leith & Aberdeen Steam Yacht Company (of Leith) way back in 1821 – just nine years after the pioneering Comet introduced this type of vessel to the world. Her owners were based at 22 Bernard Street in Leith, the commercial quarter of that town and where many a shipping and merchant company based itself.

Post Office directory for Edinburgh and Leith, 1825-26, show appendix entry for the Leith & Aberdeen Steam Yacht Company

Apart from the addition of the steam plant and paddle wheels, the Brilliant wasn’t really that different in form or construction from a sailing coaster and in common with early steamers was also rigged as a sailing vessel, for times when either there were favourable winds (to increase the speed or make her more economical) or when the mechanical propulsion broke down. She was fairly small; displacing 159 tons, being 120 feet (36.6m) long, 20.5 feet (6.2m) wide 8in the beam, with an 8 foot (2.4m) draught below the waterline and had a crew of 10

Plans of the Brilliant, shown as an example of a steam packet in “A Treatise on Marine Architecture” by Peter Hedderwick, 1830. Photograph from the fold-out plates sold at auction in November 2025

The little ship proved successful and reliable vessel in service and plied the east and north coast of Scotland over the years following her launch, originally between Leith and Aberdeen and soon adding intermediate stops in Fife or Dundee along the way. Summer saw her sailings extended to Inverness and even Wick. She was joined in service by sister ships the Sovereign and Velocity. An advert in the 1839-40 Edinburgh and Leith Post Office directory shows that the company’s ships sailed from Leith to Aberdeen every Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, with reverse journeys departing on Tuesday, Wednesday and Saturday, with a 14s fare for cabin passage or 7s for steerage. Her master was Cawfield Wade.

Coastal steam packets proved themselves in service – they could move against the wind as well as with it – and could therefore keep a faster, more reliable timetable. Before there were long distance railways in the country, they were the fastest way for people and trade to move (so long as you wanted to keep to the coasts). The industry saw a flurry of speculative investment followed by the realities of business, which resulted in a consolidation of the various companies. In 1826 Brilliant‘s owners merged the rival Aberdeen & Leith Shipping Company to form the Aberdeen & Leith Steam Packet Company and a little over ten years later in 1837 it merged with others to become the Aberdeen, Leith, Clyde & Tay Shipping Company, usually shortened to just the Leith & Clyde Co. Under this ownership we can find Brilliant in the fateful year 1839 in Lloyd’s Register.

Lloyd’s entry for 1839 for the Brilliant. The figures record where she was built, dates of previous repairs and re-engining, her insurance condition, registered dimensions, master (Campbell at this time), ownership, and her usual route of Aberdeen and Leith.

Brilliant’s usual southern terminus was of course the Port of Leith. In the engraving below after a painting by W. H. Bartlett we see a paddle steamships arriving at the quayside – note the boarding gangway hung off the back of the paddle box – and we can allow ourselves to imagine that this might be the Brilliant (although the position of the funnel and single mast says otherwise…)

Engraving after an 1828 original by Thomas Hosmer Shepherd by T. Higham, “Leith Harbour from the Pier” showing a steamer arriving at the quayside. Credit: Edinburgh & Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries

Because of the poor state of the Port of Leith in the 1820s and 30s the ship often sailed instead from the Trinity Chain Pier, which had been built as a speculative scheme to provide a steamship pier less affected by the tides of the Forth. She could quite possibly be one of the small steam ships seen in the picture below.

“Newhaven Harbour and the Chain Pier, looking east” coloured print of an engraving by R. Brandard after W. H. Bartlett, originally published c. 1840.

By 1839 Brilliant was sailing thrice a week from her home port of Aberdeen, to Leith, under Captain Cawfield Wade. The journey took about twelve hours, although she had managed it with the wind at her back in only ten and three quarters, and called at intermediate piers along the Fife and Angus coast. The schedule was well maintained, intermediate stops took only 5-10 minutes and were conducted offshore: passengers who wished to join or leave the steamer were rowed out to meet her from those ports. Once a week in the summer she would make a run from Aberdeen to Inverness and back again.

Of Captain Wade we know relatively little as his death predates statutory registers and surviving census records. In 1835 he was the master of the Aberdeen & London Shipping Co.’s smack Aberdeen Packet, sailing between those ports. He had then been a mate (officer) in steamships on the Aberdeen and Leith route before being promoted to master of the Brilliant, which seems to have been his first command in that company. He married Lilias Reid in Aberdeen in 1837, a farmer’s daughter from Alford, and we know he had a brother William, also “a mariner in Aberdeen“. I can find neither of these men in Scottish parish birth registers however Wade is an uncommon name in these parts at the time. The Caledonian Mercury would however later describe him as a son of Stonehaven.

On the afternoon of 11th December 1839, Captain Wade took the Brilliant out of Leith and headed north on what should have been just another one of her thrice-weekly scheduled runs. In the picture below we can see a steam packet departing Leith in choppy seas.

Leith Pier and Harbour, 1843 engraving by R. Wallis. Credit: Edinburgh & Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries

The little ship headed into a choppy Firth of Forth and began her scheduled calls along the Fife coast, but weather conditions were worsening.

“Rain Clouds over the Forth”, John Houston, c. 1984 .Fife Cultural Trust for Fife Council.

Up in Aberdeen Captain Morrison, the Aberdeen harbour master and pilot, was awoken from his bed by a terrible storm. It was this maelstrom into which the Brilliant would sail early that morning.

Unidentified steamer in a storm, © Aberdeen Maritime Museum

Struggling through heavy weather and violent seas and almost within sight of Aberdeen, disaster struck. At around six O’ clock in the morning when she was off the welcome site of Girdle Ness Lighthouse the deck was suddenly swamped by an unexpected wave. Cawfield Wade, at his station on the quarterdeck, could do nothing to stop himself being swept overboard and disappeared into the sea, never to be seen again. But the troubles were not over yet – the approaches to Aberdeen harbour had a fearsome reputation in Victorian times, one which was well earned. Brilliant was now wallowing through the storm towards it without her master and was about to become the first steam-powered victim of this entrance.

Brilliant’s sister ship, Sovereign, entering Aberdeen Harbour in inclement seas. Credit: Aberdeen Maritime Museum

The sea was rushing on from the beam (her sides) as the little steamer approached the harbour entrance. Passing through a feature known as The Bar her helmsman was not able to keep her clear of the churning water around the head of the pier and she was driven side-on into the harbour wall, just below the Fittie (Footdee) lighthouse.

Fittie Light House at the end of the north breakwater, entrance to Aberdeen Harbour. OS Town Plan 1866. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

The Brilliant was mortally wounded and this was quickly apparent to all onboard. The call to abandon ship was given but in his haste to get to safety the ship’s engineer failed to draw the fires from her boilers, which quickly began to run dry. Overheating due to a lack of water they soon set the wooden vessel ablaze. The artist J. Faddie captured the remarkable scene that night for us.

Brilliant ablaze off the Fittie Light. Note the assembled crowds being held back by soldiers on the pier and salvage attempts being made. Credit: Aberdeen Maritime Museum

Miraculously, all on board – except the tragic Captain Wade – were saved. Salvage parties were even organised to return to the burning ship and recover most of her cargo: the bow of the ship was stuck fast on pier allowing them to work in (relative) safety while the stern burnt out. We can see them on deck in the painting above. The mainmast was deliberately cut down about ten O’ clock in the morning, to stop it collapising on the workers, and an hour later the funnel and mizzen (after) mast did collapse.By sunset on the twelfth of December the ship had burned down to her waterline and the pounding of the seas was beginning to make short work of scattering her remains across the seabed and shoreline.

The body of Cawfield Wade would never be found. His will shows he left an estate of £50 (about £5,000 today), about a year’s pay for someone in his position and to his wife Lilias he left their household goods worth around £40. To his brother William he left his “suit of coloured clothes“, his best jacket and his watch (although it’s likely he may have taken these with him to his watery grave). To a man described as brother-in-law he left his “suit of black clothes“: his Sunday and mourning attire. These bequests were made with the unusual condition forbidding his “nearest in kin from troubling or molesting” his widow. Lilias lived out a long life as the “Widow of the Late Captain Wade“, running various lodging houses in Aberdeen. She died at the age of 87 in Old Machar parish in Aberdeen, her last address a respectable granite house in Margaret Street. This way of supporting herself would have been one of the few options open to her beyond remarrying.

The house were Lilias Wade died.

William Wade is never heard of again, although a woman Martha Wade and a child, William Wade, are in the 1841 Aberdeen census; they may have been a wife and child or sister and nephew. That William Wade junior would become a seaman and get a master’s ticket in later life.

The entry to the harbour would prove to be treacherous for the Aberdeen steamers. Nine years later in 1848, Brilliant‘s sister – the Velocity – would be wrecked in almost exactly the same spot and circumstances, driven onto the Fittie wall by heavy seas. Again all aboard were saved but the ship and all cargo were demolished within an hour and scattered along the Torryside. In 1853, the Duke of Sutherland – at the end of a long journey from London – was wrecked in the harbour entrance with sixteen lives lost.

The Wreck of the “Duke of Sutherland” on the Torry Shore, 1853

In 1863 the Prince Consort would also come a cropper. She broke her back but miraculously was salvaged, repaired and returned to service only to be finally wrecked nearby on the Hasman Rocks, a few miles south of Girdle Ness, four years later. Fortuitously there was no loss of life in either accident.

The (first) wreck of the Prince Consort on Aberdeen’s north harbour breakwater in 1863. Sir George Reid. Creidt: Aberdeen Maritime Museum

The Aberdeen, Leith, Clyde & Tay Shipping Co. would go on to prosper, becoming the North of Scotland, Orkney & Shetland Steam Navigation Company, more commonly known as just the North Company, which connected the ports of Orkney, Shetland and the north of Scotland with Leith.

North Company share certificate from 1882

Note to readers: unfortunately in April 2026, a third-party plug-in more than exceeded its authority and broke many of the image links on this site. No images were lost but I will have to restore them page-by-page, which may take some time. In the meantime please bear with me while I go about rectifying this issue.

If you have found this site useful, informative or amusing then you can help contribute towards its running costs by supporting me on ko-fi. This includes my commitment to keeping it 100% advert and AI free for all time coming, and in helping to find further unusual stories to bring you by acquiring books and paying for research.
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These threads © 2017-2026, Andy Arthur.

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#Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret