Alleged Vindictiveness
The fastidious Sir James seems to think that Buchanan rather stepped down from the high ‘Stoik philosopher’ pedestal in being what he calls ‘extrem vengeable against any man that had offendit him.’ But, as already suggested, Dr. Johnson, who was a tolerable authority on the higher morality, would have been rather prejudiced in Buchanan’s favour on this very account, and would probably have wished to know Sir James’s evidence for unfavourably meant reflection, and would certainly have thought that it did not amount to much. It may be pardoned in an old ex-courtier to think it a dreadful thing to have written ‘dispytfull invectives against the Erle of Monteith.’ No doubt, the fact that the subject of the incriminated ‘invectives’ was some ‘particulaires that was between him (the “Erle”) and the Laird of Buchwhennen,’ would dispose Buchanan to do his best, because blood is thicker than water, and when Buchanan was at his best on an invective, it is likely enough that the object of it and his friends might think it ‘dispytfull,’ if not worse, although unprejudiced people might find it very good reading. But everything depends on the merits of the ‘particulaires,’ and of these Sir James tells us nothing. With every respect to him and his kidney, an ‘Erle’ may be in the wrong while a ‘Laird’ is in the right, and if that were so in the present instance, it was the part of a ‘philosopher,’ and especially a ‘Stoik’ one, to take an ‘Erle’ precisely for what he was worth and no more, as Diogenes, the champion Stoic, in the famous anecdote, whether vero or ben trovato, tells Alexander the Great that, as far as he knew, the only thing he (the Great) could do for him (the champion) was to stand out of his light.
Sir James’s other instance of Buchanan’s ‘vengeableness’ is not much more to the point. Perhaps the story of the requisitioned ‘hackney’ that was ‘sa sur of foot and sa easy’ is not true, and merely an instance of the baseless gossip that so easily gets into circulation about distinguished people, and people that are not distinguished as well. But even if the ‘said horse’ and Melville’s history of it are facts, most people will be of opinion that Buchanan had grounds of displeasure. He was deprived of the ‘said horse’—there is no word of a price, but that is immaterial—for public purposes during the civil wars. When the public purpose was satisfied, the animal ought to have been returned to him. In the meantime Morton had ‘bocht’ the beast, apparently from the requisitioner or his donee, and Morton was not the man to pay too much for him. But when the morally rightful proprietor applied to have his own back, and that time after time, he found the Regent of Scotland standing upon his real or fancied contractual rights. If Buchanan and Morton were the great friends Melville says they were, Buchanan was not treated in a friendly manner. It takes two to make a friendship, and by the proverb it is ‘giff gaff,’ not giff and no gaff, that creates the connection. ‘Love me, love my dog,’ is one thing; but love me, and let me love your horse à la Morton, is very much another thing. Loyalty is tested by conduct in small matters, even more than in great ones, and in the circumstances stated, it would not have been wonderful if Buchanan’s feeling of personal liking for Morton, if it ever existed, underwent a change. It is certain that Buchanan at a particular point ceased to approve of parts of Morton’s policy, but not for any such trumpery reason as the one assigned by tattling Sir James. While Knox was alive, there was a complete solidarity of public action between him and Morton and Buchanan, to whom the cause of Protestantism meant the cause of liberty. Their aim was to strengthen the position of Protestantism in Scotland by the English Alliance, and to strengthen the position of Elizabeth as fighting the general battle of Protestantism against the Catholic reaction of the Continent; while, even in spite of Elizabeth herself, who had an interest in Monarchical Absolutism as well as in Protestant freedom, they firmly resisted every attempt to restore Mary, the champion of the old faith and its political tyranny.
With this view Knox, who was a statesman, and not the mere crazy fanatic and demagogue that he is sometimes mistaken for, winked at the moral irregularities of Morton, and would even have joined the General Assembly in making him an ‘Elder,’ if he had not himself, though quite free from scruples, felt that this would have been putting on rather too much; while Buchanan gave him every support in his power, and as internal evidence shows, wrote for him the Memorial demanded by Elizabeth at the final London Conference, in which the right of the Scottish nation to depose Mary from her regal office is defended on the same principles and often in the same language as are employed in the Detectio, the De Jure, the History, and indeed all through Buchanan’s writings. After Knox’s death he still pursued the anti-Marian and pro-Elizabethan policy, but with a difference. To complete the unity of Scottish and English Protestantism, Morton sought to reduce the Scottish Church to the same level with the English—that is, to make it Episcopal and Erastian. When he made this proposal he was fully aware of the opposition on which he had to reckon; for although he made very light of the other Presbyterian clergy, and indeed told some of them who kept boring him beyond endurance that he might have some of them ‘hanged’ if they did not take care, he knew that in Knox he met a man who was not afraid of him, or any one, or anything else, and who was the one man in Scotland who was a stronger man than himself.
But when Knox was gone, he had the stage to himself, and began to develop his views, apparently seeking to use Buchanan as a tool for carrying them into execution. James Melville, in his entertaining diary, tells us that when Andrew his uncle returned from abroad, Morton sent Buchanan to him to try whether the influence of an old master over an old pupil and lifelong friend could not prevail on Andrew to assist him in more or less Anglicising the ‘Kirk.’ The idea of getting Andrew Melville to assent to Episcopacy and Erastianism, or any modification of them, was of course utterly futile and ludicrous. You might as well have tried to marry fire and water. To Buchanan himself the proposal would not appear unreasonable in itself. He was not an ecclesiastic, but a scholar and thinker to whom the struggle between Presbyterian and Prelate would appear a sectarian squabble, but his interview with his severely Puritanical pupil undoubtedly convinced him that Morton’s scheme for turning the Scottish into a branch of the Anglican church would simply defeat itself. It would rend and desolate the ecclesiastical life of Scotland—as was too amply proved by the Scottish history of the seventeenth century,—and paralyse it for the time as a power in resisting the efforts of the avowed or tacit Catholic League to crush that element of liberty in the Protestant revolt, which to Buchanan was its most valuable characteristic. This, and not ‘the said horse,’ was unquestionably the explanation of Buchanan’s growing antagonism to Morton. If ‘the said horse’ was not a myth, it might, taken in conjunction with the abortive Melville negotiation, lead Buchanan to think that Morton was just a little too much disposed to convert his friends into useful instruments for his own purposes—an impression which would be greatly deepened when he noticed Morton’s great and increasing anxiety to get the young King, Buchanan’s special charge, into his power, Buchanan’s opposition to which project, for which Melville (Sir James) expressly vouches, contributed ultimately to Morton’s downfall.
But that Buchanan, from the alleged ‘hackney’ period, and from ‘hackney’ causes, ‘spak evil’ of Morton ‘in all places and at all occasions,’ is not only incredible when we remember the high character and intellectual tastes of the man, but inconsistent with the facts of the situation. If Buchanan had desired to abuse Morton in a vindictive spirit, he had the amplest opportunity in his History. But what are the facts? There is not a word of depreciation, but many of praise, more or less direct. He does full justice to Morton’s great powers and wise foresight, and in accordance with a rule which he held ought to be applied to public men, screens his defects. He describes him exactly as he was, a fearless and skilful military leader, and a sagacious, firm, and patriotic statesman. He even goes out of his way a little to state facts in Morton’s favour, recording the energy and self-sacrifice which he once and again displayed in rising from a sick-bed of very serious prostration and redeeming a dangerous crisis to which he knew no one else was equal, and in relating the last negotiations which Morton conducted with Elizabeth and her council pays a due compliment to his diplomatic dexterity and merit. Detractors have said that he stopped in his History when on the threshold of Morton’s Regency, because he did not wish to advertise an adversary. But it was really death, not animosity, that stayed the narrator’s hand. By a weird prescience, Buchanan forecast the hour of his exit from time to a nicety, if such a term may be employed in such a connection. He worked up to within a month of his death; and then, when asked whether he meant to go on with his work, he said he had now another work to do; and when further asked what that was, he said it was the work of ‘dying,’ to which he addressed himself in the fashion we have already seen—a fashion not unworthy of a ‘Stoik philosopher.’