The reply of the Marquis was admirable for the spirit of generosity and chivalry which it breathed. "To this proposition," we are told, "Huntly gave a short and resolute repartee, that his family had risen and stood by the kings of Scotland; and for his part, if the event proved the ruin of this king, he was resolved to lay his life, honours, and estate under the rubbish of the king's ruins."[45] Though Sir Thomas Urquhart, senior, was a staunch Episcopalian and a devoted Royalist, the circumstances in which he was placed forbade his aiding the ecclesiastical and political causes which were dear to him with more than good wishes. He was surrounded by neighbours of the opposite party,[46] and isolated from those with whom he would gladly have co-operated. Consequently, it remained for his eldest son, our author, who apparently was residing at that time at Balquholly Castle, in Aberdeenshire, where the adherents of the Royalist cause were numerous, to play a more heroic part. Between the date of the signing of the Covenant and that of the meeting of the General Assembly in Glasgow in 1638, The Tables, for such was the name by which the executive government established by the revolutionary party was designated, decided to subdue the city of Aberdeen and the neighbouring country, and to compel the people there to accept the Covenant. Before resorting to force, however, an attempt was made to persuade. A committee of three eminent clergymen, Henderson, Dickson, and Cant, with the Earl of Montrose as president, was sent north to deal with the somewhat unimpressible Aberdonians. The hospitable corporation of the northern city invited the visitors to a banquet of wine, but their invitation was scornfully declined. The deputation "would drink with none till first the Covenant was subscribed." Such incivility was new in the history of the city, and a very satisfactory rebuke was given to it by the materials for the proposed banquet being distributed among the poor. It can be easily imagined that after this unsatisfactory beginning the sermons delivered by the clerical deputation fell upon unsympathetic ears, and made but few converts. "The commissioners had one powerful ally in the town, in the person of Earl Marischal, the son of the founder of the College, who had died in 1623; and, when they were refused licence to preach in the city churches, they adjourned to his residence at the north end of what is now Marischal Street. The mansion consisted of several buildings with galleries surrounding a courtyard, and from these galleries the three Covenanting ministers held forth from eight o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon, trying to convince the people of the truth of the Covenant. The children of granite, however, proved absolutely impervious to the 'apostles,' whom they scornfully pelted with mud."[47]