"that the enthronement of a stranger should have been the only means to secure our liberties and laws!"[71] A week after he had been received at the levee of King George, the Earl embarked at Gravesend in a collier, attended by two servants, and accompanied by General Hamilton and Captain Hay. They were all disguised, and escaping detection, arrived on the third day afterwards at Newcastle. It has been even said, that in order the better to conceal his rank, the Earl of Mar wrought for his passage.[72] From Newcastle Lord Mar proceeded northward in another vessel; and landing at Elie, in Fifeshire, went first to Crief, where he remained a few days. He then proceeded to Dupplin, in the county of Perth, the seat of his brother-in-law, the Earl of Kinnoul, and thence, on the eighteenth of August, crossing the river Perth, he proceeded to his own Castle of Kildrummie, in the Braes of Mar. He was accompanied by forty horse. On the day after the arrival of the Earl at Kildrummie, he despatched letters to the principal Jacobites, inviting them to attend a grand hunting-match in Braemar on the twenty-seventh of August. This summons was couched in this form, for fear of a more explicit declaration being intercepted, revealing the design; but the great chiefs who were thus collected together were aware that "hunting" was but the watchword. A gallant band of high-spirited chieftains answered the call. It is consolatory to turn to those who, unaffected by the intrigues of a Court, came heartily, and with a disinterested love, to the cause of which the Earl of Mar was the unworthy leader. First in rank, was the Marquis of Huntly, eldest son of George, the first Duke of Gordon, and of that daring Duchess of Gordon, a daughter of the house of Howard, who, in 1711, had presented to the Dean and Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh a silver medal, with the head of the Chevalier on one side, and on the other the British Islands, with the word "Reddite." The learned body to whom the Duchess had proposed this dangerous gift, at first hesitated to receive it: after a debate, however, among their members, it was agreed that the donation should be accepted, and a vote was passed to return thanks to the Duchess. The Advocates then waited in a body upon the Duchess, and expressed their hopes that her Grace would soon have occasion to present the Faculty with a second medal on the _Restoration_.[73] The Duke of Gordon, notwithstanding his having been brought up a Roman Catholic, was neutral in the troubles of the Rebellion of 1715, but his son took a force of three thousand men into the field,--the clan siding with the young Marquis rather than with their chief. The Marquis of Huntly was, probably for that reason, spared in the subsequent proceedings against the Jacobites, his participation in their schemes being punished only by a brief imprisonment.