RSiTV OF CALIFORNIA. SAN DIEGO ^ 3 1822 00786 6361 niversity of California Southern Regional Library Facility BRARY AN DIEGO UNIVERSITY OF CAl IFORNIA SAN niFGO 3 1822 00786 6361 -DA AX GEORGE BUCHANAN . ■ il an ^.^..A , 3^ -^ ^ GEORGE BUCHANAN AND HIS TIMES P. HUME BROWN M.A., LL.U. PROFESSOR OF ANCIENT (SCOTTISH) HISTORY UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH AUTHOR OF "JOHN KNOX, HIS LIFE AND TIMES," ETC. EDINBURGH AND LONDON OUPHANT, ANDERSON & FERRIER I 906 PRINTED BV TURNBULL AND SPEARS EDINI3UKGH This short life of George Buchanan, ex- pressly written for young peoi)le, contains facts which do not appear in the author's larger work, published in 1890. It may be well, therefore, to state that the authority for the new facts is an official document containing the account of Buchanan's trial by the Inquisition in Lisbon, which came into the author's hands subsequent to the appearance of his former work. CONTENTS George Buchanan and his Times Childhood and Youth Buchanan goes to Paris . Buchanan serves as a Soldier He Studies at St Andrews He Returns to Paris Buchanan put in Prison and Escapes Returns to France Buchanan in the Prison of the In- quisition . . . . Buchanan and Queen Mary Buchanan made Tutor to Jaimes VI. PAGE 9 15 21 28 32 36 44 54 58 66 71 ILLUSTRATIONS George Buchanan . . . Frontispiece John Knox . . . . .10 KiLLEARN, WITH BuCHANAN's MONUMENT . l6 Old Glasgow College . . .18 Glasgow Cathedral . . .19 DuMi'.ARTON . . . . .23 St Andrews . ■ ■ ■■ 2>Z Paris in the i6th Century . . 39 James V. . . . . .41 Cardinal Beaton . . .49 Henry VIII. .... 52 Holyrood Palace . . . .67 Queen Mary .68 Lord Darnley . . .69 James VI. as a Boy . . -73 St Leonard's College, St Andrews . 77 Ruins of Crossraguel Abbey . . 79 Andrew Melville . . .81 Greyfriars' Churchyard . . .85 James VI. . . . . .91 Monument in Greyfriars' Churchyard . 94 GEORGE BUCHANAN AND HIS TIMES T AST year Scotland celebrated the -*"^ 400th anniversary of the birth of her great reformer, John Knox, and dur- ing the present year, 1906, falls the same anniversary of another of her greatest men, George Buchanan. Knox and Buchanan were fellow-Scotsmen and contemporaries ; they took the same side at the Reforma- tion, and they knew and greatly respected each other. In his " History of the Re- formation in Scotland " Knox has some words about Buchanan, which show what a high opinion he had of him. " That notable man, Mr George Buchanan," he says, "remains to this day, the year of God, 1566 years, to the glory of God, to the great honour of the nation, and to the lo GEORGE BUCHANAN comfort of them that delight in letters and virtue." But, though Knox and Buchanan had such a hiorh esteem for each other, JOHN KNOX and though they both stood • side by side as reformers, they were in many respects very different men. They led very differ- ent lives ; they were not interested in the same things, and the chief work which AND HIS TIMES ii each of them had to do was of a very different kind. At the present day Knox is far better known than Buchanan ; for every one person who has heard of Buchanan hundreds have heard of Knox. During their lives, however, this was far from being the case. If any educated Scotsman had then been asked which of the two was the greater honour to his country, he would have certainly said that it was Buchanan. One reason of this was that men did not at that time understand the greatness of the work which Knox did for his country, and the other reason was that all educated Scotsmen knew that Buchanan was considered one of the most learned men and one of the best poets in the whole of Europe. Here, for ex- ample, are some of the things that were said of Buchanan in foreiofn countries. One famous Frenchman said of him that he "was easily the first poet of his age," and another equally famous said that "he was the greatest man of his time." One of the greatest Dutchmen who ever lived, 12 GEORGE BUCHANAN Hugo Grotius, even went so far as to call Buchanan " that wonder of Scotland." But what the great Dr Johnson said of him is perhaps most interesting. " Ah, Dr Johnson," said a rather foolish Scots- man to him one day, " what would you have said had Buchanan been an English- man ? " " Why, sir," answered the great doctor, " I should not have said, had he been an Englishman, what I will say of him as a Scotsman, that he was the only man of genius his country ever produced." If Buchanan was once so famous both in his own country and abroad, why is he not so well known at the present day ? The reason is quite simple. In the time of Buchanan and for long afterwards most learned men wrote their books in Latin, and Buchanan was considered one of the best Latin scholars that ever lived. He wrote Latin both in poetry and prose just as if it was his mother tongue, and people even said that he was as good a poet as Virgil and as good a historian as Livy. AND HIS TIMES 13 At the present time, however, even learned men do not write their books in Latin, and only a few people can read that lan- guage as easily as they can read their own. The explanation, then, why Buchanan is not so well known now as he once was, is that only learned men can read his books, as they are almost all written in Latin. Still Buchanan is considered one of the three or four greatest men that Scotland has produced ; and even those who do not approve of some of his opinions, as, for instance, Sir Walter Scott, regard him as a great honour to his country. It is surely right, therefore, that his fellow- countrymen should know something of his life, and of what his country owes to him. And it happens that the story of his life is full of strange adventures, and that we know more of it than in the case of most famous Scotsmen of old times. The life of an author at the present day is for the most part only the story of how his books were written and how his readers liked or disliked them, but in the time of Buchanan 14 GEORGE BUCHANAN it was very different, and we shall see that Buchanan wandered as much and passed through as many dangers as a knight-errant in the days of chivalry. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH George Buchanan was born in the be- ginning of February, in the year 1506 or 1507 — we are not sure which. His father owned a httle property, called The Moss, quite near to the village of Killearn, in Stirlingshire, and it was on this property that Buchanan was born. The house where he first saw the lisfht was still standing in the year 18 12, more than three hundred years after his birth, but in that year it was pulled down and a new one built in its place. In memory of Buchanan, however, a chair and a table were made out of the oaken beams of the old house, and are still to be seen in the new one. His father, Thomas Buchanan, belonged to the Highland clan of the Buchanans, and in the district where his home lay it was the Gaelic language that .11. 1. EARN, WITH BUCHANANS MONTMENT From a Photograph by Valentine <5?= Sons, Dundee. CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 17 was then spoken. What was unusual for a Highlander, however, his father had mar- ried a Lowlander named A^nes Heriot, who came from Haddingtonshire, and be- longed to the same family as George Heriot, who is so well known as the founder of Heriot's Hospital in Edin- burgh. As she was a Lowlander, she, of course, spoke the Scottish language as her mother tongue, and so it was that her son learned to speak two languages in his childhood, just as in some countries on ■ the Continent children speak both French and German, or French and Italian. The father of George died while he was still a young man, and left his widow to bring up a family of five boys and three girls. Even before the father's death the family had been poor, but after it there were hardly means left to keep a roof above their heads. As her son George tells us, however, Agnes Heriot was the most careful and diligent of mothers. The motto of her family was — " Pray for a brave heart," and in her case the prayer B CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH 19 was granted, for she brought up all her children to an age when they were able to provide for themselves. When George was about the age of seven, his mother took the lease of a farm GLASGOW CATHEDRAL on the estate of Cardross, in the district of Monteith, in the south-west of Perthshire, and there he probably spent the rest of his boyhood. In the case of one who became so famous, we should like to know how and where he received his education, but all that he himself tells us is, that he was educated 20 GEORGE BUCHANAN in the schools of his native country. Accordino- to some accounts he went to school at Killearn, near his birthplace, and according- to others at Dumbarton, but it is pretty certain that at some time during his boyhood he attended school in Glasgow, then onlv a village with little more than a thousand inhabitants, but where there was a great cathedral with learned men belonging to it. BUCHANAN GOES TO PARIS Wherever Buchanan was educated, he must at least have shown that he was clever at his books, for when he was about fourteen or fifteen years old, his mother's brother, James Heriot, determined to send him to the most famous place of education in the world — the University of Paris, To Georofe this news must have been the most exciting he ever received in his life. Paris, we must remember, was not so easily reached then as it is now ; a journey which now takes only two days then took several weeks. But it was not only the distance that made the journey a serious matter ; there were a good many risks that you would never reach your destina- tion. The longest part of the journey was by sea, and ships in those days were not so safe as now. It was in the autumn, 22 GEORGE BUCHANAN too, when storms are frequent, that the University opened, so that the voyage was Hkely to be both long and dangerous. But there was a greater peril than from winds and waves. In those days the seas were swarming with pirates of all coun- tries who were on the outlook for every vessel from which they could get any plunder. A common thing for these pirates to do was to take passengers as prisoners, and only send them home when their friends paid a large sum of money for them. About the same time as Buchanan went to Paris, a Professor from Aberdeen went there to publish a book he had written, and he says that " he met with many dangers both by land and sea, and from desperate sea-robbers.' But how, we ask, did a boy of fourteen accomplish so long and dangerous a jour- ney in those days? In the first place he did not go alone. Every autumn there were numbers of Scotch boys and young men who went to Paris to study, and the custom was for some elderly person, GOES TO PARIS 23 usually a priest, to go in charge of them. If Buchanan started on his journey from his mother's home, he would probably DUMBARTON sail from Dumbarton, which was the usual port on the west coast from which Scots- men sailed to F" ranee. Arrived at the mouth of the Seine, he would be taken in a boat up that river and so reach Paris, 24 GEORGE BUCHANAN his destination. Whether Buchanan had any adventures by the way we do not know, but at all events he got safely to the end of his journey. A wonderful sig-ht it must have been for the country boy to see such a place as Paris for the first time. The grandeur of the buildings, the numbers of the people, the stranofe dresses of all classes and of all nations must have made his brain dizzy with wonder. It would be, of course, the students at whom Buchanan would look with the greatest curiosity, and, indeed, they were the most wonderful sight of all. There were so many of them that they would have made a considerable town by themselves. They were of all ages, from fourteen to thirty-five. Some were learn- ing to be clergymen, some to be doctors, lawyers, or teachers, and many had come there merely to waste their time. They came from all countries, and wore the dress of the lands from which they came, and in the case of most of them their clothes were so torn and tattered that they GOES TO PARIS 25 looked more like besfcrars than future clergymen and doctors. The greater number of them lived in colleges on the left bank of the river Seine, and apart from the city itself In the colleges they were compelled to behave tolerably well, as the oldest of them were soundly flogged if they disobeyed the rules of the college. There was one way of chastising them which the students enjoyed, though not the unfortunate victim. Two lines of students and teachers, each armed with a stout stick, were formed, and between these lines the culprit had to rush, re- ceiving a blow from every hand that could reach him. But if the students were kept in some order within the colleges, they took their full swing when they were out of doors. Their favourite time for work- ing mischief was at night ; then they roved through the streets of the city with all kinds of weapons in their hands, and considered it good fun to beat and wound every harmless person they met. Among so many thousands of students there were 26 GEORGE BUCHANAN not a few who were really bad characters, and who committed crimes, such as stealing and even assassination, which were not discovered in the darkness of the night. This was the kind of world in which Buchanan now found himself, and in which at different times he was to spend many years of his life. A question we naturally ask is, How did a Scottish boy of fourteen make him- self understood in a foreign University? The answer is, that almost all the teachers and students spoke in Latin, not only during class hours but even when they were at play. But in the best schools in Scotland boys were taught to speak in Latin, so that Buchanan would have little difficulty in understanding his teachers and making himself understood. Without Latin in those days, it is to be remem- bered, nothing could be learned, and for the simple reason that the best books on all subjects were written in Latin. We are not surprised, therefore, that during the two years he now spent at the Univer- GOES TO PARIS 27 sity of Paris he was taught Httle else but Latin. Almost all his time, he says him- self, was spent in writing verses in Latin, whether he liked it or not. We know, however, that he must have liked it, as it was by his skill in composing Latin poetry that he afterwards became so famous both in his own and other coun- tries. We do not know where he lived in Paris during these two years — whether in a college or in lodgings, as some students did, but we know that he was neither comfortable nor happy. He was often ill, and often had so little money that he could hardly buy food to keep himself alive. At length, at the end of two years, his uncle who had sent him to Paris died, and his money was stopped altogether. As at this time, also, his health was worse than ever, there was nothing for it but for him to return home, though if he had stayed another year he would have become a Bachelor of Arts, which must have been the intention of his uncle when he sent him to Paris. BUCHANAN SERVES AS A SOLDIER Buchanan was so ill on his return home that it took him nearly a year to recover. As soon as he was well, he was called upon to do what most Scotch boys in those days had to do at one time or other. The King of Scotland at this time was James v., but, as he was too young to rule, the country was governed by the Regent Albany, who was more a Frenchman than a Scotsman, as he had lived most of his life in France. At this time England was the enemy of France, and Albany, more in the interests of France than of Scotland, determined to invade England with a great army. There was then no regular army of soldiers as there is now, and when the king went to war, what he did was to command every man between the ages of sixteen and s8 SERVES AS A SOLDIER 29 sixty to meet him at a certain place on an appointed day, and bring with him such weapons as he possessed, and also provi- sions enough to last him for thirty days. As Buchanan was now more than sixteen years old, he had to obey the Regent's command, and so on the appointed day he went to the Boroughmuir at Edin- burgh, where Morningside now stands, which was the place fixed for the army to meet. So we have now to imagine Buchanan not dressed in a student's gown, but with a steel cap on his head and with a long leathern jacket covered with iron plates, and armed with a sword, a buckler, a knife, and a spear or axe. In his " His- tory of Scotland," which he wrote in his old age, he has told us the story of the expedition, and a pitiful story it is. When the army, in which there were many Frenchmen, had crossed the river Tweed at Melrose, the nobles refused to march into England as the Regent wished. The reason why they refused was that if the Scots invaded England, the English would so GEORGE BUCHANAN pay them back by invading Scotland ; and they also said that the Regent was thinking more of the interests of France than of Scotland. It would have been ridiculous, however, for the Regent to have sent home his great army without doing something with it, so he marched along the north bank of the Tweed till he came to Wark Castle, to which he laid siege. To prevent the English from coming to its assistance, he sent a number of horse-soldiers across the river into Northumberland, who burnt and destroyed everything on which they could lay their hands. But the garrison who defended the castle fought so bravely that Albany soon saw that he would not be able to take it — more especially as a great English army was coming to its assistance. There was nothing for it, therefore, but to march his army home, thoueh he had done so little with it. But it was now the month of November, and one night, while the army was on the march, there was a great snowstorm, and a number of horses and men perished from the cold. SERVES AS A SOLDIER 31 Buchanan, who was never very healthy and robust, had orood reason to remember that night, as on his return home he was confined to bed for the rest of the winter. HE STUDIES AT ST ANDREWS By the spring of the next year {1525) Buchanan was sufficiently recovered to leave home, and to resume the studies which he had not been able to finish in Paris. This time, however, he did not go to Paris, but to the University of St Andrews, which was the oldest and most famous in Scotland. The subjects he had now to study were not Latin and Greek, but logic and philosophy, and there was now at St Andrews a professor who was considered one of the most learned philo- sophers in all Europe. This was John Mair, or Major, as he was called in Latin. Major, like Buchanan, was the son of a small farmer, and like Buchanan he had also gone to the University of Paris, where he had made himself a great name for his cleverness and learninor. But though STUDIES AT ST ANDREWS 3^ Major was such a famous professor, Buchanan did not find his teaching: at all interesting, and when we read Major's books we can hardly wonder at this. Here, ST ANDREWS for example, are some of the things we find in them. Roman Catholics are not allowed to eat meat in Lent, but they may eat vegetables and fish. But in peas and beans, says Major, there are little animals, c 34 GEORGE BUCHANAN so that in eating peas and beans you must eat the flesh of Hve animals. Is it right, then, asks Major, for a good CathoHc to eat peas and beans ? Yes, he answers, because, in the first place, the creatures are dead, and, secondly, because you do not know you are eating them. Then, Major goes on, what is a good Catholic to do in the case of the beaver.'* It lives half on land and half in the water ; is it, then, a fish or a land animal ? Why, says Major, the thing is quite simple ; eat the beaver's tail and the part of its body that goes under water, and don't eat the rest. In other parts of his books Major asks even stranger questions than these. For instance, he asks whether God, if He chose, could become an ox or an ass, and whether John the Baptist's head, when it was cut off, could be in more places than one. We can hardly wonder, then, that Buchanan did not find Major's lectures very interesting, and thought that he wasted his time on trifles. But the truth is, as we shall see, that Major and his ways STUDIES AT ST ANDREWS 35 of teaching were now out of date, and that there were new things to be learned which he could not teach. However, Buchanan had not to endure Major very long. He ha.d only come to St Andrews to take the degree of Bachelor of Arts, and this he did the same year he had come. We can still read Buchanan's name in the list of the students at St Andrews, and what is interesting is that opposite his name stands the Latin word pauper, which means that he was so poor that he could not pay the fee which was required from students when they became Bachelors of Arts. HI- RETURNS TO PARIS But Buchanan had not yet completed his studies. Before he could become a pro- fessor himself, he must be a Master as well as a Bachelor of Arts, and he had to attend some university for three more years. As the University of Paris was the most famous in the world, he chose to go there again tlioiigh he could not have very pleasant memories of it after his first visit. So in the year 1525, when he was about the age of twenty-one, he returned to Paris where he was to stay for the next ten years. This time we know exactly where he lived during the whole of his stay. For the first two or three years he lived in a college for Scottish students which had been set up two hundred years before by a certain bishop in Scotland. The students only HE RETURNS TO PARIS t^j boarded in this college, however, and had to go to other larger colleges to be taught. But we are not to think that the Scotch students were either very comfortable or well fed in this college of their own. On the contrary, their food was much plainer, and they had less of it than people in poor- houses at the present day. They usually had little money to buy clothes, and those they had they had to wear till they were threadbare and tattered. But it was dur- ing the cold winters of Paris that they suffered most of all. Houses in those days did not keep out the cold as ours do now, and it was only very rich people who could afford to buy enough of fuel to keep up a sufficient number of fires. During the daytime in winter the only way the students could keep themselves warm was to play games in the open air. But it was in the night-time that the cold was hardest to bear, and we hear of them lying awake shivering in their beds — that is to say, some straw or rushes strewn on the floor with but scanty covering to keep 3S GEORGE BUCHANAN them warm. We wonder, indeed, not only how they kept up their spirits but how they kept themselves alive, and the truth is that many of them died from the hardships they had to go through. Long afterwards, when he was an old man, Buchanan remembered these hard years which he spent in the Scots College, and he tells us himself how unhappy they were. At length, when he was twenty-four years old, he became a Master of Arts, and so could become a Professor and earn his own living. As he was one of the cleverest students at the University, he was not long in finding employment, and he was lucky in getting into one of the best colleges of Paris, called Ste. Barbe. In this college, then, for the next few years Buchanan was one of a number of professors who taught students of all ages from fourteen up to thirty. Let us see what kind of life the students and pro- fessors lived in these colleges four hundred years ago, as Buchanan himself describes HE RETURNS TO PARIS 39 it in one of his poems. At four o'clock in the morning, summer and winter, every- one in the college had to get out of bed and to be in his class-room by five. And PARI.1 IN IHE i6TH CliMURY what places the school-class-rooms were even in the famous University of Paris ! There was only one seat in the room on which the teacher sat while he was giving his lesson. As for the scholars, they sat or lay on the floor which was strewn with 40 GKORGE BUCHANAN straw, which was only clianj^cd whni il became as dirty as if it had been trampled in the street. The walls of the mom were bare, the windows let in hardly any lii^hl. and, when it was dark, one or two litiU- lamps, which were constanil)- noin.L; oiii, dimly Hi up the dismal aparlmeiU. The scholars being all in their places, some sittinL,^ up and odiers l)ing at hill leni^fth. in came the master wearin;^ his cap and orown, and carrying; in his hantl his instru- ment of chastisement which was seKlnm idle during the course ol the da)'. \\ ere scholars more attcMilive in lliosc ilays than now ? Let us hear what Buchanan says of //A- class. "Some of the scholars," he sa)s, "are sound asleep, and others are thinking of everything but the book th(.'\- are reading. One is absent, but has bribed his neighbour to answer to his name when the roll is called. Another has lost his stockings, and another cannot keep his eyes off a big hole in his shoe. One pretends to be ill and another is writing a letter to his parents. And so J.VMKS V. 42 GEORGE BUCHANAN the rod is never idle, sobs never cease, and cheeks are never dry from tears." This, then, was the kind of life that Buchanan led in the College of Ste. Barbe, teaching from early morning till late at night, and then working hard at his own studies. But it was during this time that he began to make himself famous as a clever writer and one of the most learned men in the University. At this time there was a great fight going on in the University, in which some took one side, and some another. What the one side wanted was to go on reading the same books and teaching in the same way as men had been doing for several hundred years. The other side, on the contrary, wished to bring in new books, especially those by Latin and Greek authors, and to teach in quite a different way from men like John Major, who had taught Buchanan at St Andrews, Now Buchanan was all for the new way of teaching, and as he was one of those men who are very keen about everything in which they are inter- HE RETURNS TO PARIS 43 ested, he did all he could for his own side. He taught his own scholars in the new way, and became known as one of the best teachers in France. But he did more than this. He wrote poems in Latin in which he made fun of the old-fashioned teachers and set all the University laughing at them. So important a person did he become, indeed, that he was chosen to be chief of all the students from the British Islands, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Germany. BUCHANAN PUT IN PRISON AND ESCAPES At the end of four or five years Buchanan seems to have become tired of li\ing- in a college, and he looked about him for some new employment. At this time there was living in Paris a young Scottish nobleman, the liarl of Cassillis, who like other Scottish nobles had come there to study. As the Earl wished to return to Scotland, and yet not to give up his studies, he asked Buchanan to ^ersity of Californij iouthem Regional Library Facility m