Buchanan's Detection was peculiarly subject to this reproach. It was written for the purpose of proving the case of the lords by demolishing entirely that of the Queen—before England and the commissioners of England first, seated in session to investigate the subject, and after them before the world in general. The inquiry which was opened at York in October 1568, six months after Mary's escape to England, was the most like a trial of anything in which her history was discussed. She was represented by commissioners, while Murray and several of his colleagues were present in person, along with Buchanan and other secretaries or minor commissioners. It was at this inquiry that the Casket Letters were first produced under, we are bound to say, if we judge by the rules of a period of settled law and order like our own, very suspicious circumstances. Even the question of the language in which they were written is a very difficult one. All through, indeed, this question is difficult, though it is never formally discussed until that tragical occasion. In what language did Mary and Knox hold their discussions? Could it be always in French that this accomplished Queen wrote and spoke? When she is reported to have said, as recorded in a previous chapter, "That man gart me greet sore, and grat never tear," is this expression, so distinctively and strongly Scots, a translation from some more elegant murmur in another language? She who had so many tongues, had she left out that in which she had been born, the language of her childhood and of her country? This problem is only considered by the historians when it is required to prove that a letter must be forged because it is apparently first written in Scots. There is also a very great point made of the difference between Scots and English, which seems to have been very slight indeed, a difference of spelling more than anything else, nothing that could confuse any but the most ignorant reader. The following sentences from Buchanan's "Admonition direct to the Trew Lordis, maintaineris of justice" will throw some light on the latter question, the difference between the written speech of the two different kingdoms, which one writer tells us would have made it easier for Queen Elizabeth to read letters in French than Scots:—
"It may seme to zour lordshippis," says Buchanan, "yat I, melling with heich materis of governing of comoun welthis do pass myne estait, being of sa meane qualitie, or forgetting my dewtie geveing counsal to ye wysest of yis realme. Not the les seeing the miserie sa greit appeiring, and the calamitie sa neir approching, I thocht it les fault to incur the cryme of surmounting my private estait than the blame of neglecting the publict danger."
From this the reader will be able to judge what extraordinary difficulty there was in the Scotch to an English reader of those days. The use of z instead of y, of y instead of th, are matters very easily mastered; and it is surely the utmost folly to suppose that Queen Elizabeth could have found the slightest difficulty in deciphering this northern version of the common tongue.
The document quoted above is a very powerful and no doubt also violent assault upon the Hamiltons, especially called forth by the murder of the Regent Murray, the slackness of the succeeding Government in the punishment of his assassin, and the powerful reasons there were for destroying—a measure which Buchanan thought imperative both for the safety of the realm and the child-king—that powerful family, the head of which was next in succession to the Scotch Crown, and had been popularly believed to be ready for any crime to obtain it. Now that there was nothing but the life of a child between the Hamiltons and this elevation, Buchanan lifted up his testimony against the supineness which left the race undisturbed to carry out its evil designs. Murray had been murdered in the beginning of 1570, and the Admonition was printed at Stirling a few months later. In the same year Buchanan wrote that curious tract called the Chameleon, a satirical attack upon Lethington, which is not very brilliant either in language or conception, and fails altogether in the incisive bitterness which characterises most of Buchanan's other political papers. "It is at least equal in vigour and elegance to that of most compositions in the ancient Scottish language," says Buchanan's biographer, but few modern readers will agree in this verdict. Buchanan's hand had not the lightness necessary for such a performance. The guilt of Mary and the death of Murray furnished him with more emphatic motives than the iniquities of Maitland, and he was evidently stronger in assault and invective than in the lighter methods of composition.
It might have been supposed that his hopes of preferment would have been seriously injured by Murray's death. But it was after this event that he was selected for the greatest office which Scotland could bestow upon a scholar—the education of the young King. Buchanan's services were no doubt well worthy of such a reward: at the same time it may be allowed that a scholar so renowned, the first of contemporary poets according to the judgment of his class, and the greatest of lettered Scotsmen beyond all question, could not be passed over. During the intervening time he had retained the appointment of Principal of St. Leonard's College, his frequent absences being made possible by the fact that though he had much to do with the government and regulation of the University of St. Andrews, he was not actively employed in giving instruction. But after this we float at once into a halcyon time. It was in the end of 1569 or beginning of 1570 that he was appointed the governor of the King, and in this capacity and amid peaceful surroundings more appropriate to his character than the rage of politics, the old scholar becomes more distinctly visible than it was possible he could be in the midst of contention and under the shadow of greater men. He was about sixty-four at the time he entered upon the active duties of the office. "A man of notable endowments for his knowledge of Latin poesie—much honoured in other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing on all occasions moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing when he wanted," says Sir James Melville. Sandford and Merton had not been written for the advantage of schoolboys in Melville's days, yet the picture is that of an antiquated Mr. Barlow never forgetting the art of instruction. The particular anecdotes, however, told of Buchanan, do not recall Mr. Barlow or his "moralities" at all.
STIRLING CASTLE
The little King James, a precocious and clever child like all the infantile monarchs of the house of Stewart, had been established at Stirling, always a favourite residence of the Scotch Kings, where he held his baby Court in peace while his mother pined in England, and the Scotch lords struggled for the mastery, and succeeded each other as Regents at home. The troubles of the world outside seem to have been kept far from the surroundings of the boy, to whom both the kingdoms looked as their heir, the child in whom the glories of his race came to a climax, and the union of the warring kingdoms was at last secured. Personally, he was by far the least distinguished of his name, but no one as yet suspected this fact or thought of Buchanan's pupil as less hopeful than any of the gallant Jameses who had preceded him. The little Court at Stirling was presided over at this early period by the Lady Mar, a dignified matron who was "wise and sharp and kept the king in great awe," although at the same time very tender of the child and respectful of his royal dignity. Almost all James's immediate surroundings seem to have belonged to this powerful race. The master of the household was a certain Laird of Drumwhasel, to whom no other name is given, and who is described as ambitious and greedy, a man whose "greatest care was to advance himself and his friends." Alexander Erskine, another member of the household, calls forth something like enthusiasm in the courtly narrative as "a gallant, well-nurtured gentleman, loved and honoured by all men for his good qualities and great discretion, no ways factious nor envious, a lover of all honest men, desiring to see men of good conversation about the prince rather than his own nearest friends if he found them not so meet." In addition to this official household were the tutors charged with James's education, two of them being members of the Erskine family, abbots of Cambuskenneth and Dryburgh, though those titles were no doubt merely fictitious, meaning only that the "temporalities," the endowments of the extinct monasteries, were in their hands. The other and principal masters of James were Sir Peter Young and Mr. George Buchanan. Young was "gentle, loth to offend the king at any time, carrying himself warily as a man who had a mind to his own weal by keeping of his majesty's favour"—"but Mr. George," adds the historian, "was a Stoick philosopher who looked not far before him." He "held the king in great awe," so that James "even trembled" as he himself says elsewhere, "at his approach," and did not spare either rod or word in the interests of his pupil. Some of the anecdotes of this severe impartiality are amusing enough. At one time annoyed by the noise which the King and his playfellows were making, Buchanan bade them be silent under certain penalties if the offence were repeated, and provoked by a childish impertinence from James, took up the little culprit and whipped him with exemplary impartiality, notwithstanding that his companion, the little Master of Mar, stood by, on whom vicarious chastisement might have been applied. Lady Mar, rushing to the scene of action at the sound of "the wailing which ensued," took the child from his master's hands and consoled him in her motherly arms, asking Buchanan indignantly how he dared to touch the Lord's anointed. The incident is very natural and amusing in its homely simplicity; the child crying, the lady soothing him, the sardonic old master in his furred nightgown and velvet cap, looking on unmoved, bidding her kiss the place to make it well. The Master of Mar no doubt would cry too for sympathy, and the old gentleman take up his big book and move off to seek a quieter place for study. On another occasion, when the little King tried to get a sparrow from his companion and crushed the bird in the struggle, Buchanan rated him as himself a bird out of a bloody nest. He was an old man and alone in the world, indifferent to future favours from a king whose reign he would probably not live to see, and treating him with impartial justice.
There was, however, no indifference to James's education in this austere simplicity: indeed it would seem that Buchanan, like other preceptors of monarchs, had some hope of forming an ideal prince out of the boy. A few years after his appointment to his office, and when James was still too young to profit by it, he began to write his famous treatise, in the form of a dialogue, upon the laws of the kingdom, the duty respectively of kings and subjects. The De Jure Regni, published when the King was about twelve, was dedicated to him in a grave and dignified letter in which Buchanan describes his work as an attempt to expound the prerogatives of the Scottish Crown, "in which," he says, "I endeavoured to explain from their very cradle, so to speak, the reciprocal rights and privileges of kings and their subjects." He goes on to say that the book was written in the midst of the public troubles with a view to enlightening the disturbers of the commonwealth as to their duties: but that peace beginning to be established he had sacrificed his argument for the sake of public tranquillity. Now, however, that it may be useful to the development of the King he brings it forth again. The direct address to James is full of that curious self-deception or defective insight which is so common among those who have the training of a pupil of great importance in the world. The boy had grown beyond the age of personal chastisement; he had reached that in which the precocious facility of comprehension, which is so strongly fostered by the circumstances of such a position as his, looks to the dazzled pedagogues and attendants like genius, and there seems no prognostic too happy or too brilliant for the new career in which at last there is about to be fulfilled all that men have dreamed of a king.
"Many circumstances tend to convince me that my present exertions will not prove fruitless, especially your age, yet uncorrupted by perverse opinions; a disposition beyond your years, spontaneously urging you to every noble pursuit; a facility in obeying not only your preceptors, but all prudent monitors; a judgment and dexterity in disquisition which prevent you from paying much regard to authority, unless it be confirmed by solid argument. I likewise perceive that by a kind of natural instinct, you so dislike flattery, the nurse of tyranny, and the most grievous pest of a legitimate monarchy, that you as heartily hate the courtly solecisms and barbarisms as they are relished and affected by those who consider themselves as the arbiters of every elegance, and who, by way of seasoning their conversation, are perpetually sprinkling it with majesties, lordships, excellencies, and, if possible, with other expressions still more nauseous. Although the bounty of nature and the instruction of your governors may at present secure you against this error, yet am I compelled to entertain some slight degree of suspicion lest evil communication, the alluring nurse of the vices, should lend an unhappy impulse to your still tender mind, especially as I am not ignorant with what facility the external senses yield to seduction. I have therefore sent you this treatise, not only as a monitor, but even as an importunate and sometimes impudent dun, who in this turn of life may convoy you beyond the rocks of adulation; and may not merely offer you advice, but confine you to the path which you have entered, and if you should chance to deviate may reprehend you and recall your steps. If you obey this monitor you will ensure tranquillity to yourself and your family, and will transmit your glory to the most distant posterity."