West Lothian, historically the county of Linlithgow, lies between Edinburgh and Stirling along the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, its landscape rising from rich coastal lowland to the moorland heights around Bathgate and Whitburn. An account of the shire from the close of the eighteenth century praised it as one of the richest counties in Scotland, its soil enriched with locally quarried limestone and given over chiefly to wheat, barley and oats, its dairies producing good cheese and butter for the nearby capital, and judged the road along the Forth past Hopetoun House, one of the grandest mansions in Scotland with its celebrated paintings and parkland, among the most beautiful drives in the country.
Queensferry, taking its name from Queen Margaret, wife of Malcolm Canmore, who is said to have crossed the Forth there on her way to Dunfermline, thrived on its ferry crossing, fisheries and coasting trade, while Bo'ness on the coast had grown busy enough to warrant an unfinished canal scheme toward Grangemouth, its harbour standing near the ruins of a Carmelite friary founded in 1331. The ancient Dundas family, holding lands in the county under a charter dating from around 1120, ranked among the longest-established landed families in Scotland, tracing their descent, by tradition, to the Saxon kings of England.
The county's literary sons included Dr William Wilkie, author of the once-celebrated epic poem 'The Epigoniad', who rose from a struggling small farm near Ratho to a professorship of natural history at St Andrews. Linlithgow itself, the county town, was dominated by its royal palace on the loch shore, birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots in 1542, left a roofless shell by an accidental fire started by government troops billeted there in 1746 but still, even in ruin, one of the most storied royal residences in Scotland.