Inverness was one of the chief strongholds of the Picts, and in 565 was visited by Saint Columba with the intention of converting the Pictish king Brude, who is supposed to have resided in the vitrified fort on Craig Phadrig (168 m), 2.4 km west of the city. The castle is said to have been built by Malcolm Canmore, after he had razed to the ground the castle in which Macbeth according to tradition murdered Duncan, and which stood on a hill around 1 km to the north-east.

William the Lion (d. 1214) granted Inverness four charters, by one of which it was created a royal burgh. Of the Dominican abbey founded by Alexander III in 1233 hardly a trace remains. On his way to the Battle of Harlaw in 1411, Donald, Lord of the Isles, harried the city, and sixteen years later James I held a parliament in the castle to which the northern chieftains were summoned, of whom three were executed for asserting an independent sovereignty.

In 1562, during the progress undertaken to suppress Huntly's insurrection, Queen Mary was denied admittance into the castle by the governor, who belonged to the earl's faction, and whom she afterwards therefore caused to be hanged. The house in which she lived meanwhile stands in Bridge Street. The city's Marymass Fair, on the Saturday nearest August 15th, (a tradition revived in 1986) is said to commemorate Queen Mary as well as the Virgin Mary.

Beyond the northern limits of the city Oliver Cromwell built a fort capable of accommodating 1000 men, but with the exception of a portion of the ramparts it was demolished at the Restoration. In 1715 the Jacobites occupied the royal fortress as a barracks. In 1727 the government built the first Fort George here, but in 1746 it surrendered to the Jacobites and they blew it up.

On September 7, 1921 the only Cabinet meeting to be held outside London took place in the Town House, when David Lloyd George, on holiday in Gairloch called an emergency meeting to discuss the situation in Ireland. The Inverness Formula composed at this meeting was the basis of the Anglo-Irish Treaty.

This page was last updated: 24 August 2005

Town history extracts are taken from Wikipedia and are licensed under GFDL