# Balvenie Castle

ruined castle in Moray, Scotland, UK

Moray, United Kingdom

Fortification

## Story

• Balvenie Castle is a ruined curtain-walled castle on a promontory above the River Fiddich, about a kilometre north of Dufftown, built in the later thirteenth century for Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan.
• Robert the Bruce took it in 1308, and one account says the attack left it uninhabitable while another says it is unclear whether the walls were slighted.
• The Black Douglases held the lordship by 1408, and after the Battle of Arkinholm in 1455 the castle passed to John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl.
• The Atholl Lodging of the mid-sixteenth century turned the fortress into a residence, and Mary, Queen of Scots was here in September 1562.
• A dig in 1990 found a kiln, a cobbled floor and earlier pits, and a 2018 study of the masonry suggested that the walls beside the north angle may be older than the usual thirteenth-century date.

## Visiting

• From 1 April to 30 September the castle is open from 10am to 4.30pm on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and it is closed on Monday and Tuesday.
• Last entry is 45 minutes before closing, and the castle closes for lunch from 12.30 to 1.30pm.
• The castle closes from 1 October until 31 March.
• Adult admission for ages 16 to 64 is £6 when visitors book in advance and £6.80 in person.
• Concession admission for ages 65 and over is £4.50 booked online and £5 in person, and child admission for ages 7 to 15 is £3 booked online and £3.50 in person.
• Member admission is free.
• Visitors with disabilities pay standard admission, proof of disability is not required, and up to two carers are admitted free on the same ticket.
• Assistance dogs are allowed to enter roofed rooms, and other dogs are welcome in the outdoor areas.
• Some rooms are fenced off and visitors may not enter them while conservation work continues, and the ticket price has been reduced.
• Admission leaves the courtyard cobbles very uneven, a ground-floor corridor impassable with a wheelchair, and the upper floors reachable only by two spiral staircases.

## History

Balvenie Castle stands on a promontory above the River Fiddich, about a kilometre north of Dufftown, in the parish of Mortlach. It was also called Mortlach, and it watched the mouths of Glen Rinnes and Glen Fiddich and the routes toward Huntly, Keith, Cullen and Elgin. The curtain-walled enclosure is the work most likely built for Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, in the second half of the thirteenth century.

He acquired the estate in the 1260s by exchanging land at Tranent, and a charter of 1285 is taken to show that the exchange had already happened a generation earlier. His father, William Comyn, became earl of Buchan by marriage to Marjorie, daughter of Fergus, a marriage placed both between 1209 and 1212 and about 1212. Alexander, called the Black Comyn, died sometime after 10 July 1289.

The enclosure measures about 55 metres by about 40 metres. The curtain is about 2 metres thick and up to about 10 metres high, and one measured account gives the south front as fully 35 feet. The ditch is described as missing only on the east, as surviving on the north-west and south-west, and as surviving on the south and west after the other sides were filled.

On 6 October 1303 Edward I stayed here. When he restored the lands of Earl John in 1304, Balvenie and Slains were excluded. Robert the Bruce took the castle in 1308. One account says the attack left it uninhabitable, and another says it is unclear whether he slighted it, after which the written record falls silent for about a century.

The likely Douglas claim is the marriage in 1362 of Joanna Murray, also called Joanna de Moravia, to Archibald Douglas, 3rd Earl of Douglas. In 1408 his son Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas granted the lordship to his brother James Douglas, 7th Earl of Douglas, called James the Gross. Balvenie was a temporary house for James, and Abercorn Castle was his main residence.

In 1440 William Douglas, 6th Earl of Douglas, then about sixteen, and his brother David were beheaded at the Black Dinner. One account says James the Gross killed William, probably with William Crichton and Alexander Livingston. James then gave Balvenie to his youngest son, John Douglas, Lord of Balvenie, a gift also recorded as a resignation of the lands in 1445.

The Battle of Arkinholm, on 1 May 1455, broke the Black Douglases. John escaped to England and was beheaded in Edinburgh in 1463. The lordship was forfeited to the crown. Accounts of the new grant do not agree: one gives the castle at once to Sir John Stewart, who later became earl; another dates the gift to 1460; a third calls him the king's half-brother, already earl, and names a yearly rent of one red rose.

John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl, was created earl around 1457 and died on 9 September 1513. He was buried at Dunkeld, and one account says he was killed at Flodden. His descendants held the castle for about 250 years. The Atholl Lodging, built for the fourth earl and Lady Elizabeth Gordon, is dated about 1550, to the 1550s, and to a remodelling of 1547 to 1557.

On 4 September 1562 Mary, Queen of Scots, came here during her campaign against George Gordon, Earl of Huntly. Another account gives her two nights in September, and she is said to have crossed the Spey at Boharm on 6 September after two days in the castle. In 1595 the fifth earl died without a male heir, and in 1610 his daughters surrendered their interest to the crown.

Later soldiers used the place even after one summary calls the 1644 stay of the Marquis of Montrose its last military use. Covenanters routed royalists here in 1649, and Walter Innes, the laird, was killed. Government troops fled after Killiecrankie on 27 July 1689. William Duff killed himself in the castle in 1718, a new house designed by James Gibbs rose nearby after 1722, and government troops were here again in 1746.

The interior was cleared after the castle entered state care in 1925, having been scheduled on 30 April 1920. A watching brief in 1990 found a large kiln, a disturbed cobbled floor, and pits older than the west range, one of them holding animal bone, charcoal, burnt clay and ash, and no artefacts. Watching briefs in 1993 and 2014 found little or nothing. A 2018 study of form, rubble and mortar suggested that the enclosure walls on either side of the north angle may be earlier than the historically led thirteenth-century date.

## Photographs

- [Balvenie Castle Balvenie Castle is abandoned since the early 18th century. It was the ancient seat of the Comyn family, later a property of the Black — Astrid Horn](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/20/Balvenie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1566751.jpg)
- [artwork in AAAGM collection — George Washington Wilson](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4a/Balvenie_Castle_-_George_Washington_Wilson_-_ABDMS018095.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle Duftown Scotland — Lukas Riebling](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/8d/Balvenie_Castle.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle — Anne Burgess](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cc/Balvenie_Castle2.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle — Anne Burgess](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Balvenie_Castle_Ruin.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle, Scotland. — R. W. Billings](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a0/Balvenie-Castle_1.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle, Scotland. — R. W. Billings](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fe/Balvenie-Castle_2.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle, Moray, Scotland - front — Otter](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5b/Balvenie_Castle_20080501_front.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle, Moray, Scotland - west wing (from the east) — Otter](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/26/Balvenie_Castle_20080501_west_wing.jpg)
- [Balvenie Castle, Moray, Scotland - east wing (from the west) — Otter](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Balvenie_Castle_20080501_east_wing.jpg)

## Sources

- [Balvenie Castle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balvenie_Castle) — Wikipedia
- [Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Comyn,_Earl_of_Buchan) — Wikipedia
- [William Comyn, Lord of Badenoch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Comyn,_Lord_of_Badenoch) — Wikipedia
- [Robert the Bruce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_the_Bruce) — Wikipedia
- [Archibald Douglas, 3rd Earl of Douglas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Douglas,_3rd_Earl_of_Douglas) — Wikipedia
- [Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Douglas,_4th_Earl_of_Douglas) — Wikipedia
- [James Douglas, 7th Earl of Douglas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Douglas,_7th_Earl_of_Douglas) — Wikipedia
- [William Douglas, 6th Earl of Douglas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Douglas,_6th_Earl_of_Douglas) — Wikipedia
- [John Douglas, Lord of Balvenie](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Douglas,_Lord_of_Balvenie) — Wikipedia
- [Battle of Arkinholm](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Arkinholm) — Wikipedia
- [John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Stewart,_1st_Earl_of_Atholl) — Wikipedia
- [Earl of Atholl](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earl_of_Atholl) — Wikipedia
- [Mary, Queen of Scots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary,_Queen_of_Scots) — Wikipedia
- [Progresses of Mary, Queen of Scots](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progresses_of_Mary,_Queen_of_Scots) — Wikipedia
- [Balvenie Castle](https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit/all/balvenie-castle/) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Plan your visit: Balvenie Castle](https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit/all/balvenie-castle/plan-your-visit/) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [History and stories: Balvenie Castle](https://www.historicenvironment.scot/visit/all/balvenie-castle/history-and-stories/) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Balvenie Castle Statement of Significance](https://app-hes-pubs-prod-neu-01.azurewebsites.net/api/file/d90b5933-be14-43df-846a-b09800b94acb) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Balvenie Castle designation](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:designation,SM90028) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Balvenie Castle, building record MAB8575](https://her.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/Monument/MAB8575) — Aberdeenshire Council Historic Environment Record
- [The Development of Balvenie Castle](https://journals.socantscot.org/index.php/psas/article/download/7665/7633/7621) — Society of Antiquaries of Scotland
- [Discovery and Excavation in Scotland, New Series, Volume 19 (2018)](https://www.archaeologyscotland.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/DES-Volume-19-2018-72dpi.pdf) — Archaeology Scotland
- [Balvenie Castle](https://www.trove.scot/place/16851) — Trove
- [Balvenie Castle sampling consent, 2018](https://portal.historicenvironment.scot/apex/f?p=1505:300:::::VIEWTYPE,VIEWREF:decision,900011293) — Historic Environment Scotland
- [Jeremy Duncan Nicholson](https://clanmacnicol.org/jeremy-nicholson) — Clan MacNicol
- [Jeremy Nicholson, Baron of Balvenie](https://roll.baronage.com/baron/jeremy-nicholson) — Baronage of Scotland Association
- [Balvenie Castle - geograph.org.uk - 1566751.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle_-_geograph.org.uk_-_1566751.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle - George Washington Wilson - ABDMS018095.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle_-_George_Washington_Wilson_-_ABDMS018095.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle2.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle2.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle Ruin.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle_Ruin.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie-Castle 1.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie-Castle_1.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie-Castle 2.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie-Castle_2.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle 20080501 front.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle_20080501_front.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle 20080501 west wing.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle_20080501_west_wing.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons
- [Balvenie Castle 20080501 east wing.jpg](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Balvenie_Castle_20080501_east_wing.jpg) — Wikimedia Commons

## Detailed history

Balvenie Castle is a ruined curtain-walled castle on a promontory above the River Fiddich, about a kilometre north of Dufftown. The parish is Mortlach, the present local authority is Moray, and the place lay in Banffshire before the county was absorbed into the later region. One measured point puts the walls at about 150 metres above sea level. The site watched the mouths of Glen Rinnes and Glen Fiddich, the passes toward Huntly, Keith and Cullen, and the route toward Elgin. It was also known as Mortlach. A wide, flat-bottomed ditch, stone-revetted in the stretches that remain, enclosed the castle. The quadrangular enclosure is the earliest standing work, and later ranges were built against its inner faces.

The Comyn family came to this ground through the earldom of Buchan. William Comyn, born in 1163 at Altyre in Moray, served William I of Scotland against the Meic Uilleim in the north. He witnessed no fewer than 88 of that king's charters. He was sheriff of Forfar from 1195 to 1211, Justiciar of Scotia from 1205 until his death in 1233, and warden of Moray in 1211 and 1212. Between 1199 and 1200 he was sent to England to speak for the king with the new king, John. As warden he fought Gofraid mac Domnaill and beheaded him at Kincardine in 1213. After the Meic Uilleim rising was broken in 1229, he received the lordship of Badenoch. His marriage to Marjorie, also called Margaret, Countess of Buchan and daughter of Fergus, the last native mormaer of that earldom, is placed sometime between 1209 and 1212, and also about 1212. That marriage made him the first Anglo-Norman earl of Buchan. He died in 1233 and was buried at Deer Abbey. His younger son David married Isobel, daughter of Roger de Valognes, and held Kilbride, a third branch of the family. After William's death, Marjorie continued his work on St Mungo's Cathedral in Glasgow, which he had helped to oversee.

Their son Alexander Comyn, Earl of Buchan, died sometime after 10 July 1289. He was chief counsellor of Alexander III through the king's majority, Justiciar of Scotia from 1258 to 1289, Constable of Scotland from 1275 to 1289, sheriff of Wigtown from 1263 to 1266, sheriff of Dingwall across the same two years, baillie of Inverie in Knoydart, and Guardian of Scotland from 1286 to 1289 in the first interregnum after Alexander III died. In 1284 he was among the noblemen who acknowledged Margaret of Norway as heir. He is called the Black Comyn. His half-brother Walter, Earl of Menteith, is called the Red Comyn in the same family account. Alexander's wife is named Elizabeth, Isabel and Isabella de Quincy, daughter of Roger de Quincy, Earl of Winchester, and Helen of Galloway. They had at least nine children. The eldest, John Comyn, succeeded as Earl of Buchan. Another son, also Alexander, was sheriff of Aberdeen and married Joan, sister of William Latimer. Their daughter Alice later carried a claim to Buchan into the marriage of Henry de Beaumont. A son William was provost of St Mary's at St Andrews. Daughters married Patrick, Earl of March, Malise, Earl of Strathearn, Gilbert de Umfraville, Earl of Angus, William de Brechin, and Nicholas de Soules.

Alexander acquired Mortlach, later called Balvenie, in the 1260s, exchanging land at Tranent in East Lothian for it. A charter of 1285 is read as proof that the exchange had already taken place a generation earlier. The acquisition tied Buchan, on the east, to Badenoch, on the west, where Walter's castle of Lochindorb stands about 20 miles from this promontory. Alexander's own chief house was probably at Kelly, about 34 miles east, on the ground where Haddo House later stood. He is the man most likely to have built the curtain-walled castle, as a stronghold and a secondary residence, in the second half of the thirteenth century. The Comyn lands in this part of the north-east are described as stretching from the Moray Firth to the country that is now Fort William. The castle is called one of the oldest stone castles in Scotland, and one of the most imposing, because of the thickness of the curtain and the scale of the ditch. It remained a stronghold for more than 500 years.

The enclosure is sub-rectangular, about 55 metres from north-west to south-east and about 40 metres across. The curtain is about 2 metres thick and up to about 10 metres high, with a substantial external plinth. A measured account of the south front gives a height of fully 35 feet, with small scraps of parapet still in place and no sign of a hoarding or any other oversailing defence. Stretches of wall-walk survive. One account finds evidence for small projecting towers at the south-west and north-west corners, the north-western one a latrine tower, a possible third at the north-east, and no sign of a tower at the south-east. Another account places salient towers at the west and north corners and probably on the east. A third account finds the two western angles without flanking protection, though a patch in the wall and a large relieving arch suggest that a tower once projected west at the north-west, while the battered base below that patch is undisturbed. The same account describes the north-east angle as a rectangular buttress, 12 feet 6 inches by 15 feet 6 inches, large enough for a vaulted chamber, now ruinous, at first-floor level. A later summary says the projecting angle towers have gone. The towers are compared with the small projections of earlier thirteenth-century castles such as the old castle at Caerlaverock and the castle at Kinclaven, while the overall quadrangle is compared with the Comyn castles of Inverlochy and Lochindorb, which carry much larger round towers of a kind that became common later, as at the new castle of Caerlaverock, at Bothwell and at Kildrummy.

The ditch is described in three ways. One account says a wide ditch enclosed the castle on all sides except the east, where the ground falls steeply to the Fiddich and a level terrace about 35 feet broad takes the place of a ditch, the knoll of the castle rising some 10 feet above that terrace. Another says the ditch survives on the north-west and south-west, about 12 metres wide, with vertical stone-revetted sides, that the north-east side has been replaced by a cultivation terrace, and that the south-east side appears to have been filled in. A third says the ditch survives in good condition along the south and west, and was filled along the north and east, probably when the later lodging was built, the east fill easing the approach and the north fill becoming a garden or orchard. A similar filling of a ditch is noted at Dirleton. Along the east and west curtains, massive sloped plinths were recorded. Midway in the west curtain a basal drain from the kitchen opens, and near its south end a garderobe was corbelled out from the first floor. Its outer walling was later removed and the vent blocked, apparently when a building that contained the old hall was set against this part of the wall.

Ranges inside the court were probably timber at first. The masonry block in the south-east angle, later converted into a kitchen, may incorporate a thirteenth-century hall. A ruinous west range, hall and chamber over vaulted cellars, is read as a Douglas lodging of about 1400. Footings against the inner faces of the north-west, south-west and south-east walls are dated to the late fourteenth century or the early fifteenth. A fifteenth-century kitchen flue and the setting for a brew cauldron can still be seen on the south wall. An early sixteenth-century range of service chambers was built against the inside of the east wall. A measured description of the north-west corner finds a two-storey building against the north wall, its basement split into three cellars of which only the two western are vaulted. Buildings once stood all round the court and survive in the record only along the south side and at that north-west corner. The upper part of the east curtain, except a length of 42 feet at its north end, was rebuilt when the later south-east buildings went up. A similar raising of the north curtain was made where an internal range meets its west end. Of the south curtain, only the western portion was judged original, and it contains a plain loop with sandstone dressings, much weathered.

Alexander's son John, Earl of Buchan, played an important and inconstant part once war with England began in 1296, supporting at different times Edward I of England, John Balliol and Robert the Bruce. On 6 October 1303 Edward I stayed at Balvenie on his way south after subduing the north. When Edward restored Earl John's lands in 1304, Balvenie and Slains were left out, which is read as evidence that the castle had remained in English hands. In February 1306 John Comyn of Badenoch, called the Red Comyn in the account of the killing, was stabbed by Robert the Bruce before the high altar of the Greyfriars church at Dumfries. That Red Comyn is not the same man as Walter, Earl of Menteith, who is also called the Red Comyn in the family naming of the previous generation. Robert the Bruce was born on 11 July 1274, most likely at Turnberry, though Lochmaben and Writtle in Essex are also claimed. He was crowned at Scone on 25 March 1306 and died on 7 June 1329. He had been joint Guardian with John Comyn after Falkirk, had resigned in 1300 amid their quarrel, and had submitted to Edward in 1302. The two men are said to have made a secret bargain in the late summer of 1305, and also to have met because that bargain was betrayed. Pope Clement V excommunicated Bruce for the killing in the church. Bishop Robert Wishart absolved him. Edward I defeated him at Methven in June 1306. Kildrummy fell on 13 September 1306.

In late 1307 Bruce moved the war into Aberdeenshire, threatened Banff, fell seriously ill, and, leaving John Comyn, Earl of Buchan, still unsubdued behind him, turned west and took Balvenie and Duffus, then Tarradale on the Black Isle. He looped back by Inverness, failed a second time at Elgin, and defeated the earl at the Battle of Inverurie in May 1308. One account dates that battle to 22 May 1308 and places it before the wasting of Buchan. The other places the taking of Balvenie before Inverurie, and the harrying of Buchan after it. The harrying, called the herschip, was ordered so that Comyn support would be extinguished. Slains and Dundarg were destroyed. It is unclear whether Balvenie was slighted. A shorter account says an attack by Robert the Bruce in 1308 left the castle uninhabitable and that it fell out of use. Another says he took it in 1308 and that it then disappears from the written record until the early fifteenth century, or for about a century. Earl John fled to England and died later in 1308.

Nothing explains in a document how the Black Douglases first obtained the castle. The likely path is the marriage, in 1362, of Joanna Murray, also called Joanna de Moravia, to Archibald Douglas, 3rd Earl of Douglas, called Archibald the Grim and Black Archibald. She was the daughter of Maurice de Moravia, Earl of Strathearn, and granddaughter of John de Moray of Drumsargard, widow and heiress, Lady of Bothwell. Archibald is said to have offered to fight five English knights in single combat for her hand. Her estates lay across Scotland and especially in the eastern Highlands, and he claimed them in her right. He rebuilt the half-ruined Bothwell Castle. He was born about 1330, an illegitimate son of Sir James Douglas, Robert the Bruce's lieutenant, and an unknown mother. Walter Bower, perhaps as an insult about that birth, called him dark and ugly, more like a cook-boy than a noble. Jean Froissart described him as a large man who could wield a huge sword. He may have spent time at the exiled court of David II at Château Gaillard. His first certain mention is in 1342, as an heir to Douglas lands after his legitimate cousins. He was captured at Poitiers in 1356. He became the third earl after James, the second earl, died without legitimate issue at Otterburn in 1388, four years after William, the first earl, had died of a seizure. Archibald the Grim died at Threave around Christmas 1400 and was buried at Bothwell. Joanna is also said to have died in 1408, and the handing of Balvenie from her elder son to her second son in that year may be no coincidence.

That elder son was Archibald Douglas, 4th Earl of Douglas, Duke of Touraine, born probably at Bothwell about 1369 and killed at Verneuil on 17 August 1424. His mother is named Joanna de Moravia of Bothwell. By 1390 he had married Princess Margaret of Carrick, daughter of Robert III. His father gave him Ettrick Forest, Lauderdale and Romannobridge. On 4 June 1400 Robert III made him keeper of Edinburgh Castle for life, on 200 merks a year. At Candlemas 1400 he surprised an English raid near East Linton. Later that summer he was second in command to David Stewart, Duke of Rothesay. On 22 June a Scots force lost the Battle of Nesbit Moor, and Douglas answered with a raid, said to be 10,000 men, that wasted Northumberland. George Dunbar, Earl of March, persuaded Henry Percy and Harry Hotspur to wait at Wooler, and the returning army was caught at Homildon Hill in September 1402. Douglas was captured. Hotspur later freed his Scots prisoners and Douglas fought beside him against Henry IV at Shrewsbury. The ransom of the Homildon prisoners strained the Scottish treasury. James, the future James I, was taken at sea in 1406, and Robert III is said to have died of grief. Albany ruled in practice. Douglas's son, the Earl of Wigtown, and his son-in-law Buchan beat an English force at Baugé in 1421. In 1423 they came home to raise more men, carrying a request from Charles VII. John the Fearless of Burgundy, Douglas's ally and Charles's enemy, had died in 1419, and Douglas agreed. On 24 April Charles reviewed the new troops at Bourges and named Douglas lieutenant-general for the war throughout France. On 29 April Douglas received the duchy of Touraine, including Tours and Loches, the first foreigner and the first non-royal duke in France. At Verneuil he was killed with his second son James and his son-in-law Buchan, and he was buried in the choir of Tours Cathedral. The epithet Tyneman, meaning loser, is sometimes given to him and sometimes to his great-uncle Sir Archibald Douglas. He appears in Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part 1, from Homildon to the release after Shrewsbury.

In 1408 this Archibald granted the lordship of Balvenie to his younger brother James. James's own life says that the capture at Homildon left James as acting head of the family until the elder brother returned from captivity in 1409, so the grant of 1408 sits beside a captivity that one account continues into the following year. James Douglas, 7th Earl of Douglas, was born in 1371 and died on 24 March 1443. He was called James the Gross, and before his title he was James of Balvenie. He was the second son of Archibald the Grim and of Joan Moray of Bothwell and Drumsargard, now Cambuslang, who died after 1408. Abercorn Castle, a coastal fortress west of Edinburgh, became his principal residence, and Balvenie was temporary accommodation when he needed it. In the early 1420s he was the link between his brother and Murdoch Stewart, Duke of Albany, regent while James I was a prisoner in England. Those links did not stop him becoming a councillor after the king returned in 1424. With his nephew Archibald, the fifth earl, he sat on the jury that convicted Murdoch and two sons of treason for failing to pay the ransom and for leaving the king imprisoned for 18 years. In 1426 his lands were confirmed and in 1430 his eldest son William was knighted. By 1435 he was sheriff of Lanarkshire. One account says James I made him Earl of Avondale shortly before the king was killed in 1437. Another says Balvenie, meaning this James, did not become Earl of Avondale until November 1437, nine months after the murder, and that the earldom was the gift of his nephew Archibald, then lieutenant-governor. When the king died, James backed that nephew as lieutenant-general and regent for the child James II. The fifth earl died of fever in 1439, and power was then shared uneasily by Sir William Crichton, Sir Alexander Livingston of Callendar, and James himself.

Those three are the men named in the killing of William Douglas, 6th Earl of Douglas. William was born about 1424 and died on 24 November 1440. He was the eldest son of Archibald, the fifth earl, and Eupheme Graham. Besides the earldom he was Earl of Wigtown, lord of Galloway, Bothwell, Selkirk, Ettrick Forest, Eskdale, Lauderdale and Annandale, and in law Duke of Touraine, Count of Longueville and lord of Dun-le-roi. He married Janet Lindsay, daughter of David, Earl of Crawford, and succeeded when his father, regent for James II, died. Crichton, Livingston and James, Earl of Avondale, William's great-uncle, summoned William and his younger brother David to Edinburgh Castle. At the Black Dinner the boys, William then 16, were beheaded on trumped-up charges while the young king protested. One account of the castle says William was killed by James the Gross, probably in a conspiracy with the two guardians of the child king. The biographies place the blame on all three, and especially on James, because the deaths brought him the earldom and made him the most powerful magnate in the kingdom. Annandale and Bothwell fell to the crown, Galloway to William's sister Margaret Douglas, and the Douglas lands and earldom to James. A novel, The Black Douglas, was based on the death, and the dinner was later one of the inspirations for a fictional massacre.

James at once provided the lordship and castle of Balvenie to his youngest son, John. John's own life says there is little record of him before 1445, when his father resigned Balvenie, Boharm and Botriphnie to him. The father's death on 24 March 1443 and a resignation dated 1445 are both in the record. The death of Earl James in 1443 is also described as the moment when hostility between the royal Stewarts and the Black Douglases resumed. John Douglas, Lord of Balvenie, also spelled Balveny and Balvany, was born about 1433 and died in 1463. He was the youngest of five brothers, son of James the Gross and Beatrice Sinclair, daughter of Henry Sinclair, Earl of Orkney. In 1451 he was named an heir of entail to his brother William, the eighth earl. In 1448, after English raids on Dumfries by Richard Neville, Earl of Salisbury, and on Dunbar by Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland, John is said to have ravaged Cumberland and burned Alnwick. Northumberland chased him. John joined his brother Hugh, Earl of Ormonde, and on 23 October they beat Northumberland at the Battle of Sark, near Gretna. Northumberland escaped and his son, Lord Poynings, was captured. None of that fighting was at this castle.

In 1452 the eighth earl was killed at Stirling by James II with the king's own hands, after arriving under a safe conduct. A later account says John and his brothers attacked the town and paraded that letter tied to a horse's tail. From then until 1455 the crown and the brothers were intermittently at war. Safe conducts to travel were given in 1453 and lasted four years. Before the decisive fight, the king's supporters had taken Abercorn, and allies such as the Hamiltons had defected. James, the ninth earl, had gone to England for help. His three younger brothers remained. John was specifically accused of helping his mother fortify Abercorn against the king.

The Battle of Arkinholm was fought on 1 May 1455 at Arkinholm near Langholm. It was a small action, a few hundred troops, and it decided the civil war between James II and the Black Douglases, then the most powerful aristocratic family in the country. The win is described as a step toward a stronger central monarchy in the late Middle Ages. Leadership of the royal army is uncertain. One account gives it to George Douglas, 4th Earl of Angus, head of the Red Douglases, a third cousin of the Black Douglas earl. Another gives it to local Border families, Johnstones, Carruthers, Maxwells and Scotts, formerly dominated by the Black Douglases and now in rebellion, under John Johnstone of Johnstone in Annandale, who succeeded his father in 1455. Archibald, Earl of Moray, was killed and his head was presented to the king. Hugh, Earl of Ormonde, was captured and executed soon afterwards. John Douglas, Lord of Balvenie, escaped to England and for a time joined the ninth earl there. In the summer of 1455 the Douglas titles were forfeited and the lands, including this lordship, returned to the crown. The brothers and their mother were cast out for dealings with the English. The last castles held by the family fell, and the Black Douglases ceased to be a serious force. The Earl of Angus received the forfeited earldom and the old family lands in Douglasdale. On 23 July 1484 Thomas Carruthers, second son of John Carruthers of Holmains, received Corry for his service in the battle. Those lands had been forfeited from George Corry over a later Albany-Douglas invasion. A song of the battle was later recorded by The Corries, words by George Weir and music by Roy Williamson.

After James II was killed at Roxburgh in 1460, John returned with his brother. An English king had granted him an annuity of 100 pounds from the customs of Southampton and other places. The brothers ratified the Treaty of Ardtornish-Westminster for England with the Lord of the Isles, trying to stir John of Islay against the Scottish crown. For that part in the talks, the council of regency set a price of 1,200 merks on John's head, reckoned in one modern equivalence at 45,000 pounds. In 1463 he was back in Scotland raising men to the Douglas standard, was captured by the Scotts of Liddesdale, was held in Edinburgh for twelve days, and was beheaded.

The forfeiture of 1455 and the new grant are dated differently. One account says James II divided the estates among supporters, including the Douglas Earl of Angus, and provided Balvenie to Sir John Stewart, who later became the first Earl of Atholl. Another dates the gift to 1460 and calls him a kinsman, John Stewart, later the first earl. A third calls him the king's half-brother, already Earl of Atholl, and includes his wife Margaret, with a rent of a single red rose each year. John Stewart, 1st Earl of Atholl, also known as Sir John Stewart of Balveny, was born between about 1437 and 1442 and died on 9 September 1513. He was the eldest child of Joan Beaufort, widow of James I, and her second husband, Sir James Stewart, the Black Knight of Lorn, which is the kinship that makes him half-brother to James II. He was created Earl of Atholl around 1457, in the eighth creation of that title. The older comital lordship of Atholl is traced through earlier mormaers, and the title is said finally to have passed to the Stewarts. He is believed to have helped suppress John Macdonald, Earl of Ross, the last Lord of the Isles. He became ambassador to England in 1484. One account says he was killed at Flodden in 1513. He was buried in Dunkeld Cathedral.

His first wife was Margaret Douglas, the Fair Maid of Galloway, daughter of Archibald, the fifth earl, and Eupheme Graham. She had already been married to William, the eighth earl, and to James, the ninth earl, the second of those marriages annulled by the pope. She married John about 1459 or 1460 and died between 1473 and 1475. One castle account says she had been wife to both the eighth and ninth earls. They had three daughters: Jean, who married Alexander Gordon, third Earl of Huntly; Elizabeth, who married Andrew Gray; and Christian, who married Neil Stewart of Garth. Before April 1475 he married Eleanor Sinclair, daughter of William Sinclair, Earl of Orkney, who died on 21 March 1518. Their children included John, the second earl, who married Janet Campbell, and Andrew, bishop of Caithness, and daughters whose marriages reached Arbuthnott, Forbes, Innermarky, Glenorchy, Castleton, Strowan, Lennox and Pitlurg. A daughter of the second earl also married a Gordon earl of Huntly. A legend says this earl had whisky, honey and oats put into Macdonald's well so that the man was easily taken, and that the mixture became the drink called Atholl Brose. His descendants are said to have held the castle for the next 250 years, and over those 250 years the family turned the stronghold into a residence.

The transformation is the Atholl Lodging, built for John Stewart, fourth Earl of Atholl, whose dates are given as 1542 to 1579, and for his first wife, Lady Elizabeth Gordon. The date is given as about 1550, as around 1550, as the mid-1500s, as the 1550s, and as a remodelling of 1547 to 1557. Heraldic panels that survive are said to fix the work in the 1550s. The lodging is described as standing at the north-east corner, where it replaced the old curtain, and also as standing in the north-east part of the south-east range, with a rounded tower at the east corner. It is three storeys. The round tower belongs to a fashion of the mid-sixteenth century for adding such towers to high-status ranges, seen also at Huntly, at Edzell and at the bishop's palace in Kirkwall. French lodgings with a single round tower are noted from the early fifteenth century, and the French-born Mary of Guise is suggested as a possible influence, with the caution that the form should not be pinned to one building. Hall and circular chamber were already known in Scotland, as at Rait and Glamis. The room plan is compared with the palace at Huntly as rebuilt in the 1550s. The remodelling itself is compared with Huntly.

The outer face carries wide-throated gunholes, read as show more than defence, bowed oriel windows on the top storey, and heraldry. Three coats of arms stand at wall-head level. Under the arms of the fourth earl a scroll reads Forth fortune and fill thy coffers. Niches over the entrance and over the doors into the stair turrets are empty and are thought once to have held the Atholl arms. The entrance passage still has a double-leaved iron yett, a cross-barred gate, a rare survival, with another example at Doune. On the courtyard side, part of an arch over the present passage is all that remains of the entrance pend from before 1550. The courtyard front is plainer but still has two round stair towers flanking the pend. The grander stair, on the left, served the private rooms and is finished with a square top storey, perhaps a study, carried on continuous corbelling. The ground floor has four chambers which, unusually, were living rooms rather than stores, each with a latrine and a fireplace, for members of the household. The chamber in the round tower is linked by a stair to the earl's inner chamber above and may have been the steward's. The first floor was a three-room apartment of hall, outer chamber and inner chamber. A fourth room, opening from the outer chamber, has no certain use and may have been a study or even a chapel. The top floor repeated the apartment without that fourth room and is read as the countess's lodging. A medieval chapel would have stood in the castle at some earlier time. The castle has no known spiritual use now, and it is not a place of worship.

On 4 September 1562 Mary, Queen of Scots, came to Balvenie during her first northern progress. Another account says she spent two nights here in September, and the journey account says that after two days at the castle she crossed the Spey by ferry at Boharm on 6 September, on the way to Elgin. The boat cost 40 shillings. Her almoner, Pierre Rorie, gave money to poor people at Boharm and along the road. On 15 September she was at Kilravock and then at Darnaway. The journey is one of the Progresses of Mary, Queen of Scots. She had returned from France to Leith on 19 August 1561, aged about eighteen, after thirteen years at the French court and after the death of Francis II on 5 December 1560. Her council of 6 September 1561 kept the Protestant leaders, and only four councillors were Catholic: the earls of Atholl, Erroll and Montrose, and Huntly, the chancellor. She had hoped to meet Elizabeth I in England in August or September 1562. In July that meeting was cancelled because of civil war in France. Thomas Randolph was invited on the northern journey and wrote that it would last two months and more and was her own scheme more than her council's. She went by Glamis and Edzell, where Katherine Campbell, Countess of Crawford, was host, and by Dunnottar, toward Old Aberdeen. She declined Huntly Castle at Strathbogie. She was refused entry to Inverness Castle. She was at Balquhain on 1 September, at Rothiemay on 2 September, and at Gartly before the siege of Inverness. The stay at Balvenie fell inside a campaign against George Gordon, fourth Earl of Huntly, who is also called the father-in-law of the fourth Earl of Atholl. Mary and her half-brother Moray broke Huntly in 1562 after he rebelled in the Highlands. The campaign is also described as the work of the Protestant nobility against an openly Catholic lord. Huntly's daughter Jean Gordon later married James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, and that marriage was dissolved in 1567 shortly before Bothwell married the queen. Those later events were not played out in this courtyard. Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, on 29 July 1565, their son James was born on 19 June 1566, and she was forced to abdicate in July 1567. She was executed at Fotheringhay on 8 February 1587 and was first buried at Peterborough, then, in 1612, moved to Westminster Abbey by her son.

John, the fifth Earl of Atholl, died in 1595 without a male heir. In 1610 his four daughters surrendered their interest to the crown. The castle then changed hands many times. The owners named in one list are Lord Abernethy of Saltoun, Lord Ochiltree, the Inneses of Invermarkie, Colonel Sutherland of Kinminity, and the Duffs of Dipple. Another account says it passed to the Inneses of Innermarkie in 1615. The spelling Innermarky also appears, as the territorial name of Sir Robert Innes who married a daughter of the first Stewart earl. Alexander Duff of Braco acquired the castle in 1687, a purchase also placed in the late seventeenth century. The name is spelled Alexander and, in one record, Alexdander.

In 1644, during the civil war between Charles I and his Scottish subjects, the Marquis of Montrose marched from the battlefield of Fyvie and stayed at Balvenie for a few days. One summary calls that stay the last military use of the castle. Later occupations are also recorded, so the two statements stand side by side. In 1649 royalists fighting for Charles II were overtaken here by Covenanters under General Leslie and routed. Walter Innes, laird of Balvenie, was among the dead. After the overthrow of James VII in 1688 and the accession of William and Mary in 1689, government troops garrisoned the castle and promptly fled after the Jacobite victory at Killiecrankie on 27 July. A Jacobite force occupied the place briefly and left when the rising failed. In 1715 and 1716 William Duff, son of Alexander, held Balvenie for the government during the rising led by his neighbour, the Earl of Mar. In 1718 that William Duff killed himself in the castle. One account says the house was effectively abandoned at that moment. It was bought by William Duff of Dipple. In 1722 Dipple died, and his son, also William, built a new house nearby, Balvenie House, designed by James Gibbs. The old castle was then abandoned as a residence. Another account places the abandonment in the 1720s. Government troops reoccupied it briefly in 1746, in the closing stage of the last Jacobite rising, and one account calls that use a Hanoverian encampment.

In 1886 Glenfiddich Distillery opened in the shadow of the castle. Separately, Balvenie whisky is made by William Grant and Sons at the Balvenie distillery down the hill. The two works are not the same building, and neither is the castle.

The castle was scheduled on 30 April 1920 and the scheduling was amended on 3 November 1999, to clarify the protected area. It was entrusted to state care in 1925, under guardianship. One period note says it was ruined in 1929. Balvenie House was largely demolished around the time of the 1925 transfer. After it came into state care the interior was cleared by the Ministry of Works. That clearance is judged to have compromised the archaeology, though the levels reached may not have been the earliest occupation, and the ground is still treated as sensitive. A programme of tree work has aimed to lift crowns and clear shrub so that the walls can be glimpsed from a distance while the wood around the ditch remains.

In 1990 a watching brief and a limited excavation accompanied a change to the ground level of the south range. A large kiln was found, thought to belong with a brewing vat, and a disturbed cobbled floor. At the west end of the range several pits predated the adjacent west range, which is probably fifteenth century, and one account says they predated the fifteenth-century buildings. One pit, which may have been clay-lined, held many animal bones, charcoal, burnt clay and ash, and no artefacts. In 1993 a watching brief covered trenches for a power supply to the north-east round tower, running along an existing cable line parallel to the north curtain, and trenches into the tower and across its ground-floor interior. The trenches were 0.30 metres wide and from 0.30 to 0.50 metres deep. Little of archaeological interest was found in any of them. In 2014 a watching brief during the move of an information panel, on the south side of the bend in the access path, found no features and no finds.

A survey of landscape, buildings and materials, made as part of a radiocarbon study of Scottish medieval castles based at the University of Stirling, and reported in 2018, recognised contrasts from phase to phase in form, masonry style, the sources of the rubble, and the composition of the mortar. Those contrasts question earlier readings of the phasing. In particular, the form of the enclosure walls on either side of the north angle suggests a building much earlier than the historically led thirteenth-century date. The direct relationship between that early curtain and the domestic block in the north angle is fragmentary, but similarities in material and in structural form suggest the block may be of the same build. Sampling for laboratory work had begun. A consent for survey and limited sampling of exposed construction material was granted on 2 August 2018, after an application validated on 31 July 2018. No laboratory date for these walls has been published in the accounts used here. The national grid readings given for the castle are NJ 326 408, NJ 32598 40894, NJ 3260 4087 and a centred NJ 3260 4089. A map point is also given as latitude 57.45310 and longitude 3.12484 west, beside the stored point near 57.45 north and 3.124 west.

The castle is still privately owned and is managed for public opening as a scheduled monument. One account names Jeremy Duncan Nicholson, Baron of Balvenie, living in Atlanta, Georgia, as the current owner. A family notice says Jeremy Duncan Nicholson, Baron of Balvenie, was the proprietor, that he was recognised as baron in 2009 on the death of his uncle C. B. Harman Nicholson of Atlanta, and that he died on 5 March 2024 in Milan. A roll of barons records his death in 2024 and marks the barony vacant, with its seat at this castle. The same roll names a previous holder, Hammond Burke Nicholson of Balvenie, recognised on 25 September 1995. The notice and the roll do not say who holds the property after 2024.

What stands for a visitor is the thirteenth-century curtain, the ditch, the iron yett, and the lodging with its French-inspired detail. The courtyard is described as a suntrap, with a picnic place on the grass in front. Local schools use the castle for visits, and a local piping event is held here. Bats and barn owls live in the ruins for part of the year. From 1 April to 30 September the castle is open from 10am to 4.30pm on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and it is closed on Monday and Tuesday. Last entry is 45 minutes before closing. It closes for lunch from 12.30 to 1.30pm, and it closes from 1 October to 31 March. A shorter account says only that it is open from the beginning of April to the end of September. Adult admission for ages 16 to 64 is 6 pounds booked ahead and 6 pounds 80 pence in person. Concession admission for ages 65 and over is 4 pounds 50 pence ahead and 5 pounds in person. Child admission for ages 7 to 15 is 3 pounds ahead and 3 pounds 50 pence in person. Members are admitted free. Visitors with disabilities pay the standard admission, proof is not required, and up to two carers are admitted free. Assistance dogs may enter the roofed rooms. Other dogs are welcome out of doors. Some rooms are fenced off and may not be entered while conservation continues, and the ticket price has been reduced because of that work. The courtyard cobbles are very uneven. A ridge along a ground-floor corridor makes that passage impassable with a wheelchair. The upper floors are reached by either of two spiral staircases.

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