George Buchanan was a Scottish reformer, historian, scholar, and Latin poet. He was born in 1506 at the parish of Killearn, Stirlingshire and died in 1582. An uncle sent him in 1520 to the University of Paris, but the death of his uncle compelled his return, and in 1523 he joined the French auxiliaries employed by the regent, Albany, serving as a private soldier in one campaign against the English. He was then sent to the University of St Andrews, where he took the Arts degree in October, 1525. Following his tutor, Mair or Major, to France, he became in 1526 a student in the Scots College of Paris; took his degrees; in 1529 was elected professor in the College of St Barbe; and in 1532 was engaged as friend and tutor of Gilbert Kennedy earl of Cassillis, with whom he resided for five years, and to whom he inscribed his first published work, a translation of Linacre's Rudiments of LatinGrammar, printed in 1533.
In 1536 Cassillis and George Buchanan returned to Scotland, where the latter published his Sonmium, a satire against the Franciscans. To shield him from the hostility of the Roman Catholic party, James V retained him as preceptor to his natural son James Stuart, encouraging him to write the Franciscanus, one of the most pungent satires to be found in any language. By the Catholic influence he was arrested in 1539, but escaped to London and thence to France, where he became professor of Latin at Bordeaux, wrote his tragedies Jephthes and Baptistes, and translated the Medea and Alcestis of Euripides.
Among his pupils was Montaigne, and he was on intimate terms with the elder Scaliger. From BordeauxBuchanan removed to Paris, and thence to Portugal to take a chair in the University of Coimbra. Here he was sentenced by the Inquisition to be confined in a monastery, but at length received permission to depart, and was shortly afterwards appointed to a regency in the College of Boncourt at Paris, an office held by him until 1555, when he was engaged as tutor to the son of the Comte de Brissac. During this period a portion of his version of the Psalms in Latinverse was published.
About 1560 he returned to Scotland, and for some time acted as tutor to the young queen Mary, to whom he dedicated his version of the Psalms. He had now openly joined the leaders of the Reformation. In 1566 he was nominated principal of St Leonard's College, St Andrews, and in the following year was chosen moderator of the General Assembly, the only instance of the chair being held by a layman. When Elizabeth called witnesses from Scotland to substantiate the charges against Mary, George Buchanan accompanied the Regent Moray into England, and his evidence against her was highly important.
In 1570 he was selected to superintend the education of King James, whom he made an excellent scholar. He was also appointed keeper of the privy-seal, a post which he held until 1578. In 1579 he published his De Jure Regni apud Scotos, a work in which he defended the rights of the people to judge of and control the conduct of their governors, and which subsequently had much influence on political thought. The dedication of his Rerum Scoticarum Historia (History of Scotland) to the king is dated August 29th, 1582, and on the 28th September following George Buchanan died.
As a Latinist both in prose and verse he was perhaps the best of his day, as evidenced by his History and his version of the Psalms. As regards its matter, the former is entirely uncritical, and is of value only for matters belonging to his own time. Research George Buchanan
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