George Buchanan

George Buchanan (1506-1582), Scottish humanist and historian prominent during the reigns of Mary Stuart and James VI. Born near Killearn to a family of the lower nobility, Buchanan was educated at the University of Paris and the University of Saint Andrews. In 1539 he fled from Scotland to France after having been arrested for writing satires against the Roman Catholic clergy. For a while he taught at Bordeaux, where the French writer Michel de Montaigne was one of his pupils. From 1547 to 1552 he was in Portugal, where he taught at the University of Coimbra and was imprisoned for deviating from Roman Catholic doctrine. By the time he returned to Scotland in the early 1560s, he had become a Protestant, but was nevertheless appointed tutor to the Roman Catholic queen Mary, with whom he shared a love of Latin literature. In 1567, when Mary's husband Lord Darnley was assassinated, Buchanan broke with the queen, believing her to have been involved in the murder. In 1571 he denounced her publicly, and thereafter he became one of her bitterest enemies. After Mary's defeat and exile, he served as tutor to the young King James VI (later James I of England). Buchanan's most important works are a Latin history of Scotland (1589) and a Latin dialogue, De Jure Regni apud Scotos (1579), which advocates a limited form of monarchy and contains the famous statement “Kings exist by the will of the people.”