During the reigns of Charles and James, sovereigns whom Macaulay justly designates as Belial and Moloch, this castle was the state prison for confining this noble people.  In the reign of James, one hundred and sixty-seven prisoners, men, women, and children, for refusing the oath of supremacy, were arrested at their firesides:  herded together like cattle; driven at the point of the bayonet, amid the gibes, jeers, and scoffs of soldiers, up to this dreary place, and thrust promiscuously into a dark vault in this castle; almost smothered in filth and mire; a prey to pestilent disease, and to every malignity which brutality could inflict, they died here unpitied.  A few escaping down the rocks were recaptured, and subjected to shocking tortures.

A moss-grown gravestone, in the parish churchyard of Dunottar, shows the last resting-place of these sufferers.

Walter Scott, who visited this place, says, “The peasantry continue to attach to the tombs of these victims an honor which they do not render to more splendid mausoleums; and when they point them out to their sons, and narrate the fate of the sufferers, usually conclude by exhorting them to be ready, should the times call for it, to resist to the death in the cause of civil and religious liberty, like their brave forefathers.”

It is also related by Gilfillan, that a minister from this vicinity, having once lost his way in travelling through a distant part of Scotland, vainly solicited the services of a guide for some time, all being engaged in peat-cutting; at last one of the farmers, some of whose ancestors had been included among the sufferers, discovering that he came from this vicinity, had seen the gravestones, and could repeat the inscriptions, was willing to give up half a day’s work to guide him on his way.

It is well that such spots should be venerated as sacred shrines among the descendants of the Covenanters, to whom Scotland owes what she is, and all she may become.

It was here that Scott first became acquainted with Robert Paterson, the original of Old Mortality.

Leaving Stonehaven we passed, on a rising ground a little to our left, the house of the celebrated Barclay of Ury.  It remains very much in its ancient condition, surrounded by a low stone wall, like the old fortified houses of Scotland.

Barclay of Ury was an old and distinguished soldier, who had fought under Gustavus Adolphus in Germany, and one of the earliest converts to the principles of the Friends in Scotland.  As a Quaker, he became an object of hatred and abuse at the hands of the magistracy and populace; but he endured all these insults and injuries with the greatest patience and nobleness of soul.

“I find more satisfaction,” he said, “as well as honor, in being thus insulted for my religious principles, than when, a few years ago, it was usual for the magistrates, as I passed the city of Aberdeen, to meet me on the road and conduct me to public entertainment in their hall, and then escort me out again, to gain my favor.”