On September 6th, at Kirkmichael, a village near Braemar, Mar formally raised the standard of James. As the pole was planted in the ground the gilt ball fell from the top of the flagstaff, and the superstitious Highlanders regarded this as an ill-omen, though the flag was consecrated by prayer. Mar’s little band at that time numbered only sixty men, but the news of his action was noised abroad, and the rising spread like wildfire. The white cockade, the Stuart emblem, was assumed by clan after clan. James was proclaimed at Brechin, Aberdeen, Inverness and Dundee, and many of the leading noblemen of Scotland flocked to his standard. In a very short space of time the whole country north of the Tay was in the hands of the Jacobites, and, by the time Mar marched into Perth, on September 16th, his army had swollen to five thousand men. In another part of Scotland a plot had been made to capture Edinburgh Castle, and if it had been successful the whole of Scotland would probably have submitted to James. Lord Drummond, with some eighty Highlanders, had bribed three soldiers of the garrison, and it was determined to scale the castle rock at a point where one of their friends would be sentinel on September 9th, at nine o’clock at night. When they had obtained possession of the castle, cannon was to be fired, and in response to this signal fires were to be kindled on the heights on the opposite coast of Fife, and these beacons, spreading northward from mountain to mountain, would inform Mar at Perth that Edinburgh had fallen, and be the signal for him immediately to push southward. Unfortunately, one of the conspirators told his brother, who told his wife, and the secret being entrusted to a woman soon ceased to exist. The woman sent an anonymous letter to the Lord Justice telling him of the plot. The letter did not reach him until ten o’clock of the very night the castle was to be taken, so that had the conspirators been punctual, and begun operations at nine o’clock as they had planned, they would probably have succeeded. But they were drinking at a tavern, and did not bring the ladders to the castle rock until nearly two hours later. The delay proved ruinous, for scarcely had the soldiers begun to draw up the ladders than the officers of the garrison were aroused by an express telling them of the plot. The garrison was at once alarmed, and the Jacobite sentinel, seeing that all was over, fired his piece and called down to those below. The conspirators immediately made off, and most of them escaped, only four being taken. Thus women and wine, always the two most baleful influences in Jacobite plans, defeated this scheme.