Queen with him from the Palace of Holyrood to the Castle of Borthwick, situated about eight miles to the south of Edinburgh, having discovered, only a day or two before, that Edinburgh was no longer a safe residence for him. Sir James Balfour, the Governor of the Castle, seeing so strong a party start up against his former patron, had allowed himself to be tampered with, and Bothwell now suspected that he held the Castle not for him, but for the Lords at Stirling. He feared, that Balfour might be persuaded by them to sally down to Holyrood with a party of troops, and carry him off a prisoner to the Castle, and therefore thought it wise to withdraw to a safer distance. It was not long before the nobility at Stirling heard of Bothwell's retreat to Borthwick, and they resolved to take advantage of it. They advanced unexpectedly from Stirling, and, marching past Edinburgh, suddenly invested the Castle of Borthwick. It was with great difficulty that Bothwell and the Queen escaped to Dunbar, and the Lords then fell back upon Edinburgh. Huntly commanded there for Bothwell; but though, at his request, the magistrates shut the gates of the city, the opposite party found little difficulty in forcibly effecting an entrance. Huntly, and the rest of Bothwell's friends, still trusting to Sir James Balfour's fidelity, retreated into the Castle. The opposite faction, with Morton at its head, immediately issued proclamations, in which they demanded the assistance of all loyal subjects, on the grounds, "that the Queen's Majesty, being detained in captivity, was neither able to govern her realm, nor try the murder of her husband, and that they had assembled to deliver her and preserve the Prince."[100] These proclamations prove, that no feelings of hostility were as yet entertained or expressed against Mary. One of them, issued at Edinburgh on the 12th of June, commences thus:--"The Lords of Secret Council and Nobility, understanding that James, Earl of Bothwell, put violent hands on our Sovereign Lady's most noble person upon the 24th day of April last, and thereafter warded (imprisoned) her Highness in the Castle of Dunbar, which he had in keeping, and, before a long space thereafter, conveyed her Majesty, environed with men of war, and such friends and kinsmen of his as would do for him, ever into such places where he had most dominion and power, her Grace being destitute of all counsel and servants, during which time the said Earl seduced, by unlawful ways, our said Sovereign to a dishonest marriage with himself, which, from the beginning, is null and of no effect." And the proclamation concludes with announcing their determination, "to deliver the Queen's Majesty's most noble person forth of captivity and prison," and to bring Bothwell and his accomplices to trial, both for the murder of Darnley, and for "the ravishing and detaining of the Queen's Majesty's person," as well as to prevent the