The Queen in her progress is come to Old Aberdeen, where the university is.... Her journey is cumbersome, painful, and marvellous long; the weather extreme foul and cold, all victuals marvellous dear; and the corn that is, never like to come to ripeness. _Randolph to Cecil from Spynie, Morayshire_, September 18. Within these eight or ten days the Queen arrived at Inverness, the furthest part of her determined journey. She has had just cause for misliking the Earl of Huntly of long time, whose extortions have been so great, and other manifest tokens of disobedience such that it was no longer to be borne. Intending to reform these, she has found in him and his two eldest sons (the Lairds of Gordon and Findlater) open disobedience so far that they have taken arms and kept houses against her. The first occasion hereof was this. The Laird of Findlater, being commanded to ward in Edinburgh, broke prison; and being afterwards summoned to the Assize at Aberdeen, disobeyed also a new command from the Queen to enter himself prisoner in Stirling Castle. The Queen thinking this to be done by the advice of his father, refused to come to his house, she being looked and provided for. He, unadvisedly conceiving the worst, took the worst way, and supported his sons to manifest rebellion. At her arrival at Inverness on the 9th, she proposed to lodge in the castle, which belongs to her, and the keeping only to the Earl of Huntly, being Sheriff by inheritance of the whole shire, but was refused entrance, and forced to lodge in the town. That night, the castle being summoned, answer was given that without the Lord Gordon's command it should not be delivered. Next day the country assembled to the assistance of the Queen. The Gordons, finding themselves not so well served by their friends as they looked for (who had above 500 men), rendered the castle, not being twelve or fourteen able persons. The captain was hanged, and his head set up on the castle, others condemned to perpetual prison, and the rest received mercy. The Queen remained there five days, and now journeys homewards as far as Spynie, a house of the Bishop of Moray.... The Earl of Huntly keeps his house, and would have it thought that his disobedience came through the evil behaviour of his sons. The Queen is highly offended.... _THE QUEEN'S COURAGE_ In all these broils I assure you I never saw her merrier, never dismayed, nor never thought that so much[15] 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 on the causeway with a jack and knapsack, a Glasgow buckler, and a broad sword. ... His {Huntly's} house is fair, and best furnished of any ... in the country; his cheer is marvellous great; his mind such as it ought to be towards his Sovereign.