George Buchanan

by Robert Wallace; John Campbell Smith

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.’

Not so Facile

It is of course a pity that we do not possess an account and criticism of Morton’s singularly able and interesting rule in Scotland by so original a contemporary observer as Buchanan. That it would, in all respects, have been favourable, is not likely, for the reasons already noticed. That it would have been consciously unjust is incredible in the light of such treatment of Morton by Buchanan as we have, much of which must have been written after Morton’s violent and unjust execution. Indeed, one could almost wish to be sure that the ‘hackney’ story was true, as it would show how superior the ‘Stoik philosopher’ can rise to petty and personal considerations when he has to discharge the high function of narrator and judge of public events. That his delineation of men and events would have been conspicuously able is as certain as any such matter can be, notwithstanding good Sir James’s remark that ‘in his auld dayes he was become sleperie and cairless, and followed in many things the vulgair oppinion, for he was naturally populaire,’ etc. There is no sign of this alleged falling off into sleepiness and carelessness in Buchanan’s History. The last chapter is as well thought out and written as the first. You may think him wrong, but you can have no doubt about the distinctness of his explanation of the sequence of events and the motives and aims of historic characters, while the style in no respect falls below the unsurpassed standard of prose Latinity maintained throughout the entire work. One grows a little suspicious of Sir James’s judgment when his reasons for it are considered. Buchanan had come, he says, to ‘follow in many things the vulgair oppinion, for he was naturally populaire’; that is to say, he was democratic in spirit. Of course he was. He felt it to be his mission in life to oppose Regal Absolutism in behalf of public liberty, and never let slip an opportunity of maintaining that all sovereignty originated from the people, and was justifiable only as it subserved their advantage. The courtly Sir James did not like this. He was a good deal of what Thackeray has immortalised as a ‘Snob.’ He might very well be called Sir ‘Jeames,’ and when he says Buchanan had been ‘maid factious,’ we must not forget that the ‘faction’ Sir J. had in his eye was the ‘faction’ of Liberty against Tyranny, and how far that can be justly called a faction will be settled by different critics according to their different tastes.

With his soreness on this point, it is not surprising that he should describe Buchanan as ‘easily abused, and sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme,’ and that ‘he spak and wret as they that were about him for the tym informed him.’ That is to say, Buchanan did not belong to Sir J.’s ‘set,’ which is not surprising. The Democratic old scholar and thinker was not likely to sympathise with the kind of people whom the courtier naturally regarded as the élite of society and the salt of the earth. Knox and Scaliger, Moray and Mar, Randolph and Ascham, Melville and Scrymgeour, Beza and Tycho Brahé, were among his correspondents or intimates; and if Buchanan thought that ‘information’ derived from persons of that stamp was prima facie trustworthy, it was no more than the rules of evidence permitted and justified. It is barely conceivable that they sought to ‘abuse’ him and succeeded, but specific proof of this is necessary in such a case, and is not forthcoming. That Buchanan was ‘sa facill that he was led with any company that he hanted for the tyme’ is rendered utterly incredible by the facts. It is one of the most remarkable circumstances in Buchanan’s career that he mixed with people of the most opposite and irreconcilable characters and positions, while preserving his independence of both. There was, for instance, a time when he was equally at home with Maitland and Moray, and what is more wonderful still, with Knox and Mary. On the very same day when he had been reading Livy and turning verses with Mary at Holyrood, he might be discussing Calvin and the political situation with Knox in his High Street house; and what is more, each of them knew it. To my mind this does not point to ‘facility,’ but to dominancy. The ‘Stoik philosopher’ was quietly their master, because he was his own. He was not moved by their inter-personal attractions and repulsions, but passionlessly contemplated them as interesting life-‘forces,’ that he had to take as they came along, and in his calm judicial presence they bowed their more vehement heads. That is as probable an explanation as any of a very striking psychological phenomenon.

‘Gud Religion’

‘He was also of gud religion for a poet,’ says Sir James, when adding the last item to the creditor side of his profit and loss account of Buchanan’s qualities. ‘Gud religion for a poet’ is good, and characteristic of the times which said Ubi tres medici, duo athei,—‘Three Physicists,[4] two Atheists.’ Humanists, and still more Humanist poets, were also suspect, and for the same reason. The rebellion against Scholasticism, the resuscitation of the old Pagan spirit in thought and art and science, involved a staggering blow to Ecclesiastical Faith. Men whose minds were steeped in the literature of ancient Greece and Rome could not take sympathetically, I will not say, to Christianity, but to the dogmatic system of the Church, and even to much of its ethical teaching. ‘Humanity,’ in the sense of ‘the humanities,’ really meant the antithesis of Divinity. The Renaissance was a wakening up of the human intellect, an assertion of ‘private judgment’ in every possible sphere of its exercise, and in innumerable instances the Humanist created a faith and a code of morals for himself, although for comfort and convenience he might conceal his spiritual interior from the view of the ignorant and the unenlightened. In many an instance he held that there was one law for the men who understand, and another for the ‘vulgar’ who cannot understand. Popes and priests were often at heart Humanists of the most ‘advanced’ type, pushing the right of ‘private judgment’ to its furthest limit, discarding the public creed, and in morals, exercising, in favour of their appetites, that dispensing power which ‘private judgment,’ the Pope’s successor in so many awakened intellects, carried over with it, at all events extensively into practice, while simultaneously a silent outward conformity with the established system was carefully maintained.

Not that it did not sometimes betray itself. It is a Roman dignitary who is credited with the famous remark about the profit brought in by ‘this fable of Christ’; and everybody remembers how horrified poor Luther was in Rome when he heard the priests at Mass saying panis es, panis manebis,—‘bread thou art, and bread thou shalt remain.’ The open licentiousness of many Church dignitaries of those days is too notorious for special mention. ‘Private judgment’ may be a primary human right and a duty owing by reason to itself of the highest order; but to cast off in its favour an inveterate obedience to authority, is a psychological problem surrounded with the greatest difficulty and danger, and unless when under the control of an adequately strong judgment and will, may cause much wreckage of faith and conduct. I do not think that Buchanan suffered much in this way—certainly not so much as many others among the leaders and supporters of the Reformation; while any damage he sustained was amply compensated by his gains. Knox and other Reformers—I speak of Scotland—were driven by the violence of the recoil involved in their assault on the Catholic and Feudal system into extreme positions, necessarily harmful to themselves, and bequeathing legacies of disadvantage to their successors.