George Buchanan
Two boys were quarrelling in the privy garden of Stirling Castle on the Forth. Their shrill little passions rose ludicrously inconsonant with the majestic gravity of the old historic pile. That had its roots deep-striking into the mighty rock from which it had sprung; and, above, every lusty tower, every folded roof, every soaring pinnacle of the massed congeries of hall and chapel and battlement which comprised the royal rookery was a living testimony to the fecundity of the source from which those roots had drunk. Stirling Castle, in common with other impregnable fortresses of its kind, had grown fat and strong, like a strapping vine, on the blood which soaked its bases—so strong that, in this year of stormy grace 1576, it was still the residence confidently appropriated to a regal minor.
The Castle, massive and somnolent, commanded imperturbably from its height the beautiful open champaign—with its meandering river like a silver uncoiled spring—in the midst of which it was set; the angry small voices vexed its serenity about as much as a buzzing fly might vex a mammoth. Yet they had this right in common with the great voices of the past; one of them came from the lungs of a nestling of the right eagle breed.
He, this nestling—the one destined to be our first Stuart monarch—was a stubby, commonplace boy of ten. His face was pale and somewhat meaty, his features were undistinguished in a pawky good-humoured way, his hair was longish and of a bright auburn, which was to deepen later on. Now, under the influence of anger, its roots were flushed red, which gave it an inflamed look, and the young gentleman’s close-buttoned doublet was sadly disordered, and its lace torn at the wrists.
And what was the subject of dispute, meet to environments so stern and so imposing? Why just a tame sparrow, which King Jamie was bent on appropriating from his young playmate, the Master of Mar, to whom it had been presented by a diplomatic gardener.
“Gie it me, Geordie,” cried his Majesty, snatching and struggling. “I wull hae it. Saul of my body, man, dinna ye ken the voice of royalty?”
The other, a ferrety, pink-lidded and ginger-headed boy, lithe but no match in avoirdupois for his thicker-set antagonist, answered only by cries and contortions. In the result, the sparrow changed hands, a crushed and lifeless little body. Geordie broke away, and made, howling, for a certain room in the Castle.
It was a room well known to him, sombre, rude in its scholastic appointments, but with the stony acerbities of its walls somewhat softened by a good lining of books. An old man of seventy, sitting reading by the bare strong table, raised his head as the intruder entered.
“Ye’ll be comin’ to tell me of some new act of tyranny, Geordie man?” he said.
He looked a very shrewd, observant old fellow, in the falling collar and long black tunic and gown of a grammarian. He had a high, bald forehead backing into a sparse crop of hair, like a track losing itself on a hill; a rough, bulbous nose, and rugged cheeks shaven down to where a thick moustache lost itself in a thicker chin-beard. There were plentiful bags and crow’s-feet about his eyes, which were like bright buttons in soft wrinkled leather.
The boy, thus encouraged, made the utmost of his wrong. In the midst his Majesty entered, a little shamefaced, but defiant. He condescended to avow his act and to justify it, and he exclaimed on his playfellow for a “snoovin’ taed,” which was the Scots for sneaking toad.
Papa Buchanan—Majesty’s preceptor—listened very serenely, slipping in a word here and there where the angry brabble permitted it. Probably in the end he would have summed up and dismissed the squabble with a warning, had not Master Jamie, incensed by some hint of correction, muttered just audibly an invitation to anyone to whom the peril of the essay might appeal “to come and bell the cat”—a challenge to which authority, in its own interests, was bound to respond. It did, in fact, respond promptly, with an amazing vigour for its years, and with the pliant persuasion of a leathern “tawse” kept for the purpose; and, when it had done with Majesty, it administered a similar dose to the other disputant, as the shortest way to restoring amity through fellow-suffering.
“Haud your rowt, Geordie, like a gude mannie, and rin awa,” said the breathed pedagogue, as he prepared to sit down and resume his reading. But it was not to be. Attracted by the uproar, the Countess of Mar—widowed sister-in-law to Mr. Alexander Erskine, the King’s present guardian—came hurrying into the room, and gathering, from the position of the royal hand, the true state of the case, caught the vociferous victim into her arms, and, rounding on the grammarian, demanded passionately of him how he dared lay his hands on the Lord’s anointed.
“The end justifies the means,” responded the pedagogue coolly. “I marle your ladyship’s confusion of pairts. The Lord shall keep to his ain and I to mine.”
“Yours, ye presumptuous fool!” cried the angry woman. “But ’tis time this arrogance ended.”
Master Buchanan, a practised psychologist, decided, in the words of the proverb, to “jouk and let the jaw gae by.” He withdrew.
The King forgot all about his chastisement, and its indignity, in a day or two. But not so the Countess. The act had brought to a head in her a long-swelling process of exasperation. That this audacious pedagogue should dare to claim a privilege denied to his colleagues, when a whipping-boy, common to all of them, was provided in the person of the young Sir Mungo Malagrowther, was simply intolerable. Her smouldering resentment took fire in a determination to bring this domineering will to its knees. And, as luck would have it, an opportunity seemed quickly given her.
One day her son, the young Master of Mar (who had by no means forgotten, or forgotten to resent, his clouting), came to her, triumphant, with some notes which he had picked up while spying about in his absent preceptor’s room. These notes were incriminating, they positively smelt of treason, and the Countess was fiercely jubilant. She abode her time.
But Buchanan had in the meanwhile discovered his loss for himself, and, putting this and that together—Geordie’s new air of defiance, and his lady mother’s conscious looks—had formed a shrewd guess as to the state of affairs.
That day he appeared before the King with a sifflication, or petition, which he desired his young pupil to sign, convinced that the thoughtless, good-natured boy would never trouble to examine into more than its purport. And his surmise was justified.
“What is it a’ aboot?” was the indifferent demand.
“Just a bit place at Court, Jamie, my man,” answered the pedagogue, “for a worthy chield, more fitted than mony to adorn his office.”
The King signed, and the strategist retired with his spoil.
That night the storm burst. A message reached Buchanan, desiring his immediate attendance in the royal cabinet. He obeyed the summons without hurry, an odd smile on his dry old lips. He found Erskine, the Countess, and the young Master of Mar gathered about the King’s chair. Her ladyship lost no time in opening the proceedings.
“D’ye ken those papers, Maister Buchanan?” she cried, flinging the notes down on the table under the pedagogue’s nose.
“Vera weel,” he answered—“and who stole them from my room?”
“The Lord shall justify the theft,” she cried, “since it hath revealed a treason to His anointed.”
Erskine, half bored, half amused, bade the pedagogue take up the notes and explain them as he could.
“They are for a work I am projecting,” said Buchanan—“De Jure Regni apud Scotos—which is just a compendium of poleetical philosophy.”
“Read,” cried the Countess; and, without hesitation, Buchanan obeyed, giving the whole of what is here only the gist:
“If a King should do things tending to the dissolution of human society, for the preservation of which he has been made, he is a tyrant, ergo an enemy of all mankind. Is there not a just cause of war against such an enemy, and is it not lawful in such war for the whole people, or one, or any, to kill that enemy? May not any out of all mankind lawfully kill a tyrant, as one who has broken the bond made between himself and mankind?”
“Haud!” cried her ladyship, rabid to seize her point. “What ca’ ye that, brother, but a direct incitement to treason? Heard ye aye such sedeetious blether! A bond, the deil hae’t! I tell ye, ye misleared pedant, there’s na bond save between the Lord and His anointed, and whosoever thinks otherwise, or designs in ony way to injure the King, is guilty of treason to the Lord.”
“I submit,” said Buchanan. “It is treason to design in ony way to injure the King. Oot of your ain mouth, woman, do you stand convict.”
He took a paper from his pocket and threw it on the table.
“Read!” he commanded, in his turn.
Dumbfounded, but somehow impelled, the Countess lifted the paper, glanced at it, and, uttering a shriek, threw it down before Erskine, who, also perusing it, gave a sudden snort, and handed it, with an amused ironic bow, to the King.
It was a document, signed by his own Majesty, vesting his title and authority for the space of fifteen days in the person of his faithful servant George Buchanan.
The pedagogue, with a stern aspect, advanced, and, motioning the King out of his chair—a dictate which the pupil instinctively obeyed—assumed the vacant place.
“D’ye deny your ain sign-manual, James Stuart?” he asked.
The boy, looking very sheepish, shook his head.
“It shall be a lesson and a warning to ye, Jamie,” said Buchanan. “How aften have I rebuked, and vainly, your complying good-nature! And now that easy concession has dethroned ye for the nonce, as ane day it may for gude and a’. For the future, read your sifflications before signing them.” He whipped round suddenly on the small Master of Mar. “As for this young traitor and his mither,” he bawled, “that have conspired to injure their King——”
The Countess cried out, as Geordie ran screaming into her arms, “No treason, gudeman, no treason! I allow the truth of your contention. It is maist lawful, under just provocation, to dethrone and kill a tyrant.”
“Humph!” said Buchanan, twisting into place again. “I am nane, maybe, so convinced of that as I was, and we will e’en leave the point for future discussion. In the meanwhile, as King I decree that the person of ane George Buchanan, homo multarum literarum, is sacred from this hour and for ever, and that onyone at ony time conspiring to injure it, shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the King’s Majesty.”
Alexander Erskine lay back in his chair and went into a roar of laughter.