page_title: Argyll's Lodging
section_title: Sir William Alexander
hierarchical_section_title: Argyll's Lodging / History / Sir William Alexander
caption_attribution_description: English: A plaque recalling the ceremony which gave rise to the legal fiction that part of the Esplanade belongs to Nova Scotia. Well, it did symbolically when soil from the colony would be strewn on the Esplanade for the duration of the ceremony.
context_page_description: Argyll's Lodging is a 17th-century town-house in the Renaissance style, situated below Stirling Castle in Stirling, Scotland. It was a residence of the Earl of Stirling and later the Earls of Argyll. The Royal Commission regards it as “the most important surviving town-house of its period in Scotland”. At the end of the 20th century it became a museum.
context_section_description: In 1629 Sir William Alexander, whose family was related to the Campbells of Argyll, bought the house from the Erskines. The house adjoined property of the Campbells who had owned several houses in Stirling since the fourteenth century. Around 1600 their residence stood on the corner of Broad Street and Castle Wynd. Sir William was able to buy the Erskines’ home because he was related to the family, his wife being Janet Erskine.
  Sir William was born in 1577 in Menstrie, a village lying a few miles to the north east of Stirling. He was one of several tutors to Prince Henry, heir to the Scottish throne. In 1603, when the crowns of Scotland and England were united, he followed King James VI to London. He was knighted in 1609 and in 1626 was appointed principal Secretary for Scotland for life. He is chiefly remembered today for his settlement of the colony of Nova Scotia in North America under a royal charter granted in 1621. In 1630 he was elevated to 1st Earl of Stirling and Viscount Canada.
  Sir William had his Stirling home redecorated when he realised that Charles I was intending to come to Scotland for his Scottish coronation in 1633. He had the house remodeled into a small palace with public and private suites and a grandly decorated exterior. He died insolvent in 1640, leaving the house to his son Charles, but the town of Stirling claimed the property in lieu of his unpaid debts. The town council wanted to furnish it as a guesthouse, but this plan was never realized, and in the 1660s, it was sold to the Duke of Argyll.
  An armorial tablet on the wall above the main entrance displays Alexander's coat-of-arms. The shield is supported by a Native American and a mermaid. A scroll above displays his family motto Avt Spero Avt Sperno and a scroll below the motto of Nova Scotia per mare per terras. The crest is believed to be the first armorial representation of a beaver.
caption: Nova Scotia plaque at Edinburgh Castle.
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