by Неизвестный
George Buchanan was one of the leading Scottish humanists of the sixteenth century, steeped in classical and modern continental literature on politics and religion. By the time he came to tutor James, he was already an elderly man, troubled by intermittent poor health, but he was still an imposing figure. Even on a brief visit, it was evident to Henry Killigrew that there was a tension between James’s male tutors and the women of his household: ‘his schoolmasters are desirous to have him from the handling of women, by whom he is yet guided and kept, saving when he goes to his book.’27 The difference in relations between James and his mother figure, the Countess, and James and the pseudo-father figure, Buchanan, is shown vividly in the earliest surviving letters by the King. To James, the Countess is ‘Lady Minny’, an affectionate Scots word for ‘mother’.
Lady Minny,
This is to show you that I have received your fruit and thanks you therefore, and is ready for mee [more] when ye please to send them, and shal gif [give] as few by me as I may. And I will not trouble you farther till meeting which shall be as shortly as I may, God willing. And so fare ye well as I do, thanks to God.
James R.28
The letter to Buchanan refers to him as ‘pater’ (father) but the letter is in Latin, the sentences formal, the emotions expressed as if by rote.
King James to his most worshipful teacher,
George Buchanan, greeting.
Since, O my father, nothing can be more profitable or more welcome to me than your presence and, on the other hand, nothing can happen more unfortunate or more regrettable than your absence, I beseech you again and again that you will not allow me any longer to lack so great a good or to be distressed by this misfortune. Wherefore please be so good as to do your utmost, as soon as those matters are finished on account of which you set forth, to free yourself therefrom and to hasten to us; and may you come no less safe and sound than you are longed for. Farewell!29
Although Privy Council records the name Buchanan, along with Peter Young, as tutors only in 1570,30 Buchanan was manoeuvring to take this position even before the child-king was crowned. At the 14th Assembly of the Kirk, held at Edinburgh on 20 July 1567, six days before James’s coronation, the ministers subscribed articles agreeing to ‘defend and maintain’ the Prince, and to ‘defend the true religion, and set forward the work of Reformation’. But their agenda reached wider. The education of youth was a top priority. The fourth article urged ‘That none be instructers of youth, publicly or privately, but [except] these that are admitted by the Superintendents and Visitors of Kirks, being found both sound and able’, claiming education within the Kirk’s jurisdiction. The ninth article then stated ‘That wise, godly, and learned men have the charge of the education of the Prince, that coming to majority he may be, by the blessing of God, a comfortable instrument of God, being virtuously educated.’ Interestingly, this Assembly was conducted under Moderator George Buchanan.31
It was not only the Scottish Kirk that was intent on moulding James into a beacon of reformed Christianity, the perfectly educated Christian prince. The eyes of Europe were upon James as a possible successor to the Protestant Elizabeth. In 1580, when the Geneva-based Calvinist Théodore de Bèze [Beza] published Icones, a collection of portraits of exemplary Protestant activists, James seemed the natural dedicatee. An icon of the King in profile served as a frontispiece, with James, in armour, carrying a drawn sword in one hand, an olive branch in the other. ‘In vtrunque paratvs’ read the motto under the portrait, signifying that James was ready for war or peace. The dedicatory letter that followed offered a prayer that God would bring to perfection the faculties that James possessed for the good of his own subjects and those of many nations, and made flattering references to the two superlative Scotsmen – friends and correspondents of Beza himself – who served as the royal tutors, ‘Domino Georgio Buchanano’ and ‘Domino Petro Junio’. Among the other Scots whom Beza praised were those who had visited Geneva, John Knox and Andrew Melvill.32
Buchanan possessed very clear ideas on how a prince should behave, and published extensively on the subject. Like John Knox, he promoted the idea that a people could take up arms against a tyrant, or a ruler who didn’t follow the proper religion. Scottish history, he argued, contained a plethora of examples of bad kings who had been so dealt with by the Scottish people. These ideas were most extensively promulgated in his books De jure regni apud Scotos (1579) and Rerum Scoticarum historia (1582), both of which works were dedicated to his young charge. Among the very worst of princes, he wrote, was James’s mother Mary, who emerges in his writings as a vain, shallow, proud, ignorant, devious, conniving papist whore. This was the vision of Scotland and of his own family with which James was force-fed during his formative years. In accounts of Buchanan’s relations with James, the distaste of the tutor for his student’s family is palpable. On one occasion, James decided that he wanted to have a tame sparrow that belonged to his fellow pupil, the Master of Erskine. When Erskine refused to give it up, the two boys started ‘a struggling’, and in the scuffle the sparrow was killed, setting Erskine crying. When Buchanan discovered what the rumpus was about, he gave the King a box on the ear, and told him, ‘That what he had done, was like a true bird of the bloody nest of which he was come.’33
As this incident indicates, Buchanan did not refrain from demonstrating physically that the King was not above the law. Several anecdotes of James’s education found their way into George Mackenzie’s 1722 life of Buchanan, passed on, he claimed, from the Earl of Cromarty, who heard them from his grandfather, Lord Invertyle, James’s fellow scholar.34 These stories usually involve some physical punishment being doled out by Buchanan to James. Even at the time, Sir James Melville commented that, in his teaching methods, ‘Master George was a stoic philosopher, and looked not far before the hand’;35 and Francis Osborne famously records that, in later life, the King used to say of a high-ranking official with whom he had to deal, ‘that he ever trembled at his approach, it minded him so of his pedagogue’.36 By comparison, Peter Young was ‘gentler and loathe to offend the king at any time’, according to Melville, and allegedly allowed James a whipping boy, the supposed surrogate for the kingly buttocks who absorbed any wrath against their master; but Buchanan clearly didn’t indulge his charge this way.37
Buchanan was, in Melville’s words, ‘a man of notable qualities for his learning and knowledge in Latin poesie, much made accompt of in other countries, pleasant in company, rehearsing at all occasions moralities short and fecfull [forceful], whereof he had abundance, and invented where he wanted [lacked].’ Although ‘of good religion for a poet’, Buchanan in his old age was easily influenced by whoever he was with, which led to him becoming increasingly factious in his writings and conversations, and vengeful to those who offended him.38 Certainly, some of the teaching techniques Buchanan employed with the King were quite cruel. According to one anecdote, published by his own editor Nathan Chytraeus in 1600, Buchanan decided to quash early in life James’s tendency to grant whatever favour was asked of him, often without paying attention to what it was that was being requested. So he went to James holding two books of requests, one of which included a supplication that James might give him permission to be King for a fortnight and have complete control over Scotland. James blithely signed all the requests as usual. Buchanan spent the next two weeks telling everyone that he was King of Scotland, and one day asked James to confirm this. James was amazed. But then Buchanan showed him his signature on the petition. ‘“Well,” he said, “here is the letter signed in your hand in which you have handed the kingdom to me.” And he began to reproach the King, as a tutor reproves his pupil sternly, instructing him that he could not grant whatever was requested without careful deliberation, otherwise considerable damage to him might follow. In future, therefore, he should not grant someone his wish, unless he was fully aware of what was involved, and knew who would be the beneficiary.’39
What is most remarkable about James during these years is th
e degree to which he attempted to resist Buchanan’s indoctrination – although whether this was due to other influences in his life (perhaps the Countess of Mar?) or to an innate intelligence is impossible to determine. One day, for example, Buchanan set James a theme for study: the history of the so-called Lauder Bridge conspiracy that took place during the reign of James III, when the nobles were conferring secretly in Lauder Kirk about how to remove evil favourites from the King. Archibald, Earl of Angus, told the conspirators the fable of some rats that decided to attack a cat, and elected to tie a bell around its neck so that they would be able to hear it coming. But one old rat raised an objection: which of them was brave enough to put the bell on the cat? Angus proclaimed that he would ‘bell the cat’, in the process earning himself the nickname ‘Bell the Cat’. Buchanan clearly intended the story to demonstrate how a sovereign’s supposedly absolute rule and the sway of his unsuitable favourites can be successfully challenged. But this tale left a different impression on James’s mind. Late one afternoon, James was playing with the Master of Erskine, and making too much noise for his schoolmaster’s taste. Buchanan told the King to ‘hold his peace’. When this proved of no avail, Buchanan told James ‘that if he did not hold his peace, he would whip his breech’. James retorted ‘that we would gladly see who would bell the cat’ – identifying with the cat, James III, and mocking those who would challenge his authority. Buchanan understood that he had a student who would not passively receive all his teaching. ‘In a passion’, he threw down his book and whipped the King ‘severely’, all of which commotion roused the Countess. Hearing her charge cry out, she ran to the King and took him up into her arms, asking what the matter was. James told her that the master had whipped him, and she turned on Buchanan, asking how he dared ‘put his hand on the Lord’s anointed’? Buchanan replied, calmly: ‘Madam, I have whipped his arse, you may kiss it if you please.’ Here we have James’s insistence that he, as King, is beyond Buchanan’s power – who would dare bell the cat? who would dare whip the King? – and the painful realisation that his supposed kingly immunity, in fact, does not exist. It might stand as a metaphor for much of his life as King.
Perhaps realising early that James would be a difficult student, Buchanan sought to protect his own reputation. Dedicating to James a printed edition of one of his early works, Baptistes, in November 1576, Buchanan explained that the work strove to provoke youth ‘to the imitation of antiquity and to the study of piety’. It ‘peculiarly’ applied to James, however, ‘because it sets forth lucidly the tortures of tyrants, and even when it seems they flourish most, their miseries’. It was not only profitable for James to understand this but a matter of necessity: ‘so that you may begin to detest mature what you must always flee. Moreover, I want this little book to be a witness to posterity, if ever at any time impelled by evil counsellors or by the license of rule overcoming right education you act otherwise, that must be attributed for a fault not to your teachers but to you, who will not have conformed to their admonishing correctly.’40
In later life, James had some praise for his difficult schoolmaster. Speaking with a group of Scottish academics in 1617, the King berated English scholars for their bizarre pronunciation of Latin. James claimed to owe his superior skills to Buchanan: ‘All the world (said he), knows that my master, Mr George Buchanan, was a great master in that faculty [speaking Latin]. I follow his pronunciation both of the Latin and Greek, and am sorry that my people of England do not the like; for certainly their pronunciation utterly spoils the grace of these two learned languages; but ye see all the University and learned men of Scotland express the true and native pronunciation of both.’41 Buchanan also provided a grounding in Latin verse composition, again in a style different from the English grammar school: the poet and playwright Ben Jonson later said to James that ‘his master G. Buchanan had corrupted his case when young and learned him to sing verses, when he should have read them’.42 Buchanan’s teaching was not wasted on James – but time would show that his main achievement was to provide the King with a philosophy of the proper place of a king against which he could fight.
* * *
While he was Regent, Morton’s regime, though harsh, brought at least the illusion of stability to Scotland. After Henry’s murder, Mary’s abdication, the assassinations of Moray and Lennox, and Mar’s death (or murder, as some would have it), Scotland finally enjoyed a few years of relatively consistent rule. Laws were restored and enforced. Relations with England sweetened. Morton dealt with the perennial decline of Scotland’s finances by seizing back Queen Mary’s jewels from the Countess of Argyll (Moray’s widow, who had now remarried).
But the unity was deceptive. Storms were brewing in the Kirk. Although a committed Protestant, Morton was not about to let the Kirk get all its demands. In 1574, the minister Andrew Melvill returned to Scotland after several years on the Continent, most recently and influentially in the heart of Calvinism, Geneva. He set about reforming the Kirk along the lines of the Geneva ecclesiastical polity, giving power to a series of Church courts, headed by the General Assembly of the Kirk, while insisting on a flattening out of Church hierarchy. The victims of this were those in the upper echelons of the Church, the bishops, for whom there was now no place in the Kirk. When Morton tried to force the appointment of a new Bishop of St Andrews, he clashed with John Knox, and (according to Melvill’s nephew James) shouted angrily that ‘There will never be quietness in this country till half a dozen of you be hanged or banished!’43 But in practice, relying on Parliament not to ratify the Kirk’s anti-episcopal policy, Morton allowed Melvill a pretty free hand, and in 1578 the General Assembly, as expected, condemned episcopacy altogether.
Throughout these years, James’s name was often invoked, although his person was kept away from political and religious battles, safely ensconced at Stirling. But as he approached adolescence, there was official recognition that the King was no longer a child. The Privy Council registers for 1577 record the order that ‘Our Sovereign Lord the King’s Majesty, whom God preserve … being come to the twelfth year of his age and daily increasing by the favour of God to greater perfection and activity, as well in his person and ability of body as in his spirit and learning … in time coming shall be served and attended upon in his chamber with men, committing the care thereof to Alexander Erskine of Gogar’, the younger brother of the late Regent Mar.44 This appointment was to become significant because Erskine of Gogar truly disliked Morton. His opposition to the Regent, combined with his de facto control of the King’s body, meant that James’s Stirling household took on a new potential to those opposed to Morton.
The first to make use of this was the Earl of Argyll. In early 1578, Argyll was feuding with the Earl of Atholl. Morton intervened and summoned them both before the Council to answer charges of levying private war, and ignoring his summons to lay down arms. Incensed at this trespass into what they considered strictly their own business, Argyll and Atholl promptly forgot their feud and turned their combined anger on the Regent. Morton realised that much of the nobility was now against him, and decided to resign his office into the King’s hands, although ‘whether he did this upon a plain intention to denude himself, or upon plain hypocrisy’ is unclear. On 4 March 1578, he was granted an audience with the eleven-year-old James at Stirling.45 There he laid out his case, pointing out the burdens of the office, not least that all his predecessors had ‘been violently murdered’; the ‘great oppression and rebellion’ in the realm; the ‘age and weakness’ of his body; and, most importantly, that it was expected that James would ‘embrace the government upon your own person’.46 According to Peter Young, James responded to the protestation of his advanced age by quipping, ‘I wish to God that you were as young as the Earl of Angus, and as wise as you are.’47 For his part, Morton drew attention to James’s age. ‘Since I perceive increase of wisdom to grow daily in your Majesty, and that ye have, praised be God, the dutiful favour of all your subjects at this hour, I am most willing to dem
it my charge in your Majesty’s own hands, presently.’ James’s immediate reaction was reluctant. He was too young to govern, he said, ‘and if I were, I know not to what place I should make my resort’. Morton replied that James would ‘be well lodged in the Castle of Edinburgh, both for the good situation of the house, the pleasant sight of the fields, and the sight of the sea and frequency of ships’. This seemed to cheer the King, who agreed that he ‘would willingly condescend to that charge, providing his keepers should have the maintenance of that Castle’.48
By the time the Regent had returned to Edinburgh, intelligence of the meeting had reached Atholl and Argyll. They hurried to the King at Stirling, and as soon as they arrived James told them of Morton’s offer ‘to demit his office’. They encouraged him to accept ‘such a lawful petition’, to write to the nobility and ‘declare unto them how willing he was for to accept the regiment upon his own person’. At the age of eleven, James decided to assume government, perhaps taking as his guide his grandfather James V, who had been declared to be of age at twelve. Before Morton knew what was happening, the nobility had ‘conspired in minds and bodies against him, and voted all that the King should accept the regiment’. On 12 March 1578, his ‘acceptance of the government’ was proclaimed in Edinburgh and James directed his commissioners that ‘from thenceforth they should acknowledge no other authority but of his Majesty’.49 Government would now be conducted in the King’s name by a Council; Morton’s Regency was over.
Morton had always claimed that ‘As soon as ever His Majesty shall think himself ready and able for his own government, none shall more willingly agree and advance the same nor I.’ In practice, he was not willing to accept the invitation, and from his forced retirement at Lochleven plotted his return to power. His tool this time was James’s schoolroom friend Jocky o’ Sclaittis: John Erskine, now the Earl of Mar.50 When his father, the Regent Mar died in 1572, John was only fourteen, and so his uncle, Alexander Erskine of Gogar had been appointed guardian of his estate and Keeper of Stirling Castle – and hence of the King – during John’s minority. Now, however, Mar was twenty years old and chafing at his uncle’s rule. Morton and he came to an arrangement: Morton would support Mar’s claim to the guardianship of Stirling and James on condition that Morton would be allowed to hold sway in government. On the morning of 26 April 1578, Mar rose early at Stirling, supposedly to go hunting, and called for the keys, so that he could leave the still fiercely secured castle. When Erskine of Gogar brought the keys, he was seized by Mar’s men and pushed outside the castle gates, during which scuffle a son of the guardian was killed. For James, it was another moment of intense panic: woken by the noise, he rushed from his chamber, tearing at his hair. Hearing of the news at Edinburgh and realising what was afoot, several lords raced to Stirling to stop Morton gaining control but Mar, in the name of safeguarding the King, skilfully refused to let more than one of them enter the castle at a time. Foiled by this strategy, the lords reluctantly agreed that Mar could take charge of the King until Parliament met.