On the 1st of September, Mary left Aberdeen for Inverness; but, in the interval, the Earl of Mar, perceiving that there might be some occasion for their services, had collected a pretty strong body of men, who marched forward with the Queen and her train. In journeying northwards, she travelled by Rothiemay, Grange, Balvenie, and Elgin, passing very near the Earl of Huntly's castle. No entreaty would induce her to enter it; but she permitted the Earl of Argyle and Randolph to partake of its hospitality for two days. "The Earl of Huntly's house," says Randolph, "is the best furnished that I have seen in this country. His cheer is marvellous great; his mind then, such, as it appeared to us, _as ought to be, in any subject, to his sovereign_." On the 8th of September, Mary went from Elgin to Tarnaway, the baronial residence of the earldom of Murray, and at that time in possession of a tenant of the Earl of Huntly. Information being there received that Sir John Gordon's friends and vassals, exasperated at the over-degree of rigour with which he was treated, were assembling in arms; and that Sir John, instead of going to Stirling, had joined the rebels, a proclamation was issued, charging him to surrender, by way of forfeit, into the Queen's hands, his houses and fortresses of Findlater and Auchindoune. This proclamation was expressed with a bitterness which must only have enraged the discontents the more. It required the surrender of these strongholds, with the avowed intention of breaking the power of the rebels, and in consideration of her Majesty having heard "the many grievous complaints of the poor people of this country, hearing them to be _herreit_ (robbed) and oppressed by him and his accomplices, in times by-past; and fearing the like, or worse, should be done in time coming." The same proclamation described Sir John Gordon's wife as "Lady Findlater, his _pretended_ spouse."[60] Fearing that even all this might not be enough to induce Huntly to take such steps as might be plausibly construed into treason, Mar now, for the first time, produced his title to the Earldom of Murray, and assumed the name. The only meeting of council held north of Aberdeen was at Tarnaway, and at the first council after the Queen had returned to Aberdeen, we find Mar's name changed to that of Murray. Robertson, who has followed Buchanan's, or in other words Murray's own account of the transactions in the North, in referring Mar's assumption of the Earldom of Murray to a later date, forgets that it must have been sanctioned by Mary and her Council; and that the only opportunity for doing so, in the interval of their departure from, and return to Aberdeen, was at Tarnaway.[61]