Hollyrood Abbey

In the early middle ages, a King of Scotland claimed that right before he was gored to death by a stag, which clearly didn't like his hunting expedition, a glowing cross stunned the stag and saved his life. Now I might have taken this divine intervention as a sign to stop hunting, but the King chose to build Hollyrood Abbey instead.

For the next few hundred years it was actually a very important national center, used for meetings of the Scottish Parliament and, in an attached structure, as a residence for royalty.

Around 1500, a larger royal residence, Hollyrood Palace was built next door. This was really just in time, because soon after the Abbey was sacked by British armies. It was then repeatedly plundered and damaged by townsfolk during the multiple reformations, and in the end, it turned out that the stone vaulted roof just wasn't built that well, and it collapsed during a storm at the end of the 18th Century. Now it's a glorious ruin at the back of the Palace.

Despite its long period of deterioration, the Abbey remained important, mostly as a sanctuary from debtor's prison. Debtors could roam freely on the large grounds once accepted into sanctuary, and a secondary society flourished within the sanctuary grounds to feed and house them. On Sundays, debtors could visit wives and families in town since all legal offices were closed. Our favorite asylum seeker was the Duke d'Artois, later Charles X of France, who escaped the French Revolution and lived in Hollyrood Palace while in exile, not caring a whim about his bankrupt state while under sanctuary.

But maybe my favorite, albeit morbid, story about Hollyrood Abbey has to do with Mary Queen of Scots. Her first husband died soon after marriage, and she married Lord Darnley next. He proved to be a power-hungry loser and Mary wasn't so happy. But she had a private secretary, David Rizzio, with whom she became very close. Darnley, obviously, didn't like that one bit, especially the rumors that the child Mary carried was fathered by Rizzio. So one day Lord Darnley and some hoodlum Protestant nobles entered Mary's private chambers, dragged Rizzio out despite him clinging to the skirts of a now very pregnant Mary, pulled him into Mary's private chapel and stabbed him an enormous number of times. The story is that they later buried him under the stairs of Hollyrood Abbey so that Rizzio would be stomped on throughout time.