This new insult upon himself and family was, as Murray expected, deeply felt by the Earl of Huntly. He began to suspect that it was intended to ruin him; and in this extremity, with evident reluctance, he prepared to defend himself. Mary, meanwhile, marched forward to Inverness. "On her arrival," says Robertson, "the commanding officer in the Castle, _by Huntly's orders_, shut the gates against her." The gates were shut, but certainly not by Huntly's orders; for as soon as he heard that the Castle had been summoned, he sent his express commands to the governor (who had acted upon his own responsibility) to surrender it. These commands, however, came too late; the Castle had been taken by storm, and the governor put to death. What right the Earl of Murray, or even the Queen herself, had to demand the surrender of the castle, which belonged hereditarily to Lord George Gordon, the Earl of Huntly's eldest son, does not appear. As Chalmers remarks, the whole proceeding seems to have been illegal and unwarrantable. Huntly, who was on his way to Inverness, to attempt an arrangement of these disputes, by a personal interview with the Queen, when he heard of the execution of the governor, returned to his castle.[62] The Gordons were now fairly roused; and, collecting their followers, they determined to act resolutely, but not as aggressors. Mary was made to believe that she was in the midst of a hostile country; and though there was, in reality no intention to attack her, every means was taken to inspire her with fear, and to convince her of the treacherous designs of the Earl of Huntly. But Mary, had a courageous spirit, when it was necessary to exert it. "In all those garbrilles," says Randolph, "I never saw the Queen moved,--never dismayed; nor never thought I that stomach to be in her that I find. She repented nothing, but when the Lords and others at Inverness came in the morning from the watch; that she was not a man, to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and knapsack, a Glasgow buckler and a broadsword."