In a departure from our regular On This Day strand, we present a new companion series: Around This Time, wherein we look back at events that happened at approximately this time of year, but are not associated with any particular date. You get a lot of that sort of thing in April: throughout Scotland's turbulent history, it's never been a month for momentous days.
There are some events which, while they can be said to have occurred on a particular date, took so long that it becomes difficult to say when they were not happening. Such an event is the Lang Siege of Edinburgh Castle, which took place over a period of about two years (broken up by occasional lulls and truces), but began to end at the beginning of April in 1573.
The Siege was the result of the extremely confusing Marian Civil War, wherein the dispute was over whether Scotland's monarch ought to be Queen Mary or King James I (later VI - spoiler alert). Since James was only a year old when the war began, and Mary was imprisoned firstly in Loch Leven Castle and then in England throughout the entire conflict, it was really a battle over who would keep the Throne warm in their absence (this is a common theme among most of Scotland's internal wars).
The divisions were both political and religious, with the "Queen's Men" made up mostly of the Catholic nobility, supporting the exiled Mary, and "King's Men" forming the Protestant government, supporting the regency of James. Matters were only slightly further obscured by the government being made up of members of the nobility. However, one such, the powerful Earl of Moray, having convincingly defeated the majority of Mary's forces early on in the war, managed to bring Scotland largely under his control by 1570, ruling from Edinburgh Castle.
At that point, having secured the Regency under his personal authority, the Earl was unfortunate enough to become the first recorded instance of an assassination being carried out with a firearm, when he was shot by a Marian supporter in Linlithgow. Naturally this threw the entire situation into turmoil again, one of the most significant consequences of which was the defection in 1571 of Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, then Keeper of Edinburgh Castle, from the King's men to the Queen's. Since the garrison of Edinburgh was under his direct command, this also transferred the allegiance of the entire city to Mary's camp.
In May of that year, the King's forces (under the Earl of Lennox, the new Regent) gathered outside the walls of Edinburgh and began the tedious business of trying to retake the city. It took over a year for Lennox's forces to enter the town, and even then it was only thanks to a negotiated truce which allowed Grange to resupply and fortify the Castle. After the truce had expired, there began a four-month period where the City of Edinburgh was at war with Edinburgh castle.
Incredibly, the town remained populated throughout this period. The citizens (having nowhere else to go) were obliged to continue their daily lives as best they could. The taking of the town by the King's Men did have the benefit of reopening trade with the town of Leith, but that was offset somewhat at the start of 1573 by the commencement of artillery fire from the castle.
By the beginning of April, Lennox's forces had finally been supplemented by English troops and cannon (one of which had been forged in the castle and captured at Flodden), and after nearly a month of setting up there began a 12-day long bombardment of the castle, during which over 3000 shots were fired at its walls. However, even after demolishing the castle’s gatehouse completely with sustained gunfire, capturing all of its surrounding structures and poisoning its wells, the Castle held out until the end of May.
Eventually, it was taken by negotiation, with Grange surrendering the castle to the English forces (having been informed that Lennox had no intention of letting him go free regardless of whether he surrendered or not), hoping to be released along with his garrison. The English did allow the garrison to go free, but Grange was turned over to the Scots, along with his brother and two silversmiths who had been minting coins in Mary's name in the castle (an early example of quantitative easing?), and the four were hanged together at the Mercat Cross.
The Lang Siege began a decline in importance of the Castle as the centre of Scottish power: it took decades to rebuild its fortifications and residences, and while James did hold court there during his early reign (prior to becoming King of England), he preferred to retire to the Palace of Holyrood. His successor Charles I only visited the castle once, and when Oliver Cromwell's forces invaded Edinburgh in 1650 it was surrendered after a mere three-month siege, an effort reputedly described by locals as "barely even trying".