The Reputation of George Buchanan (1506-82) in the British Atlantic World Before 1832
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The Reputation of George Buchanan (1506-82) in the British Atlantic World before 1832 Caroline Frances Erskine Department of History University of Glasgow A thesis submitted to the University of Glasgow in October 2004 for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. @ Caroline Frances Erskine 2004 2 Abstract This thesis examines the reputation of the Scottish political theorist and historian George Buchanan (1506-82), not only within Scotland but also as it was transmitted throughout the British Atlantic World during the seventeenth, eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. In order to assess how his name and ideas have been abused by later generations, the thesis begins by examining Buchanan's own beliefs in their sixteenth-century context. The Calvinist faith that defined Buchanan for later generations was, it transpires, tempered during his lifetime by a devotion to humanism. Yet Buchanan's status as a pillar of the Scottish Reformation establishment was an important factor in making his name and ideas usable (or, on the other hand, unusable) for political theorists in later centuries. The central focus of the thesis is on Buchanan's political theory, particularly on the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century afterlife of his radical and popular theory of the right of resistance against tyrannical rulers, outlined in his De lure Regni apud Scotos (1579) and the Rerum Scoticarum Historia (1582). Within the political cultures of Scotland, England, Ireland, and the American colonies, Buchanan's reputation was most vigorously contested during periods of political crisis and revolution: the Covenanting uprisings of seventeenth-century Scotland; the revolutions against the Stuarts in seventeenth-century England; the American Revolution; the era of the French Revolution; and, finally, the radical era in Scotland in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars. In addition, the thesis also examines the place of Buchanan — and of the Covenanting tradition with which he came to be associated — in the culture of Enlightenment Scotland. Indeed, the thesis explores the question of how far the association of Buchanan's name with Covenanting extremism promoted or retarded his acceptance into the canon of political theory. 3 Contents Acknowledgements 5 Chapter 1 The Politics and Religion of George Buchanan Introduction 6 Humanism and Calvinism 15 A Lukewarm Calvinist? 21 'Holy Fountains': Buchanan on the Classics and the Scriptures 24 Great Men: the purpose of humanist history 29 Histories of the Reformation: Knox and Buchanan 33 Pagan and Christian Causalities in the Historia 36 Buchanan and the question of who can resist 49 A Personal Religion? 54 Chapter 2 Approaches to the Posthumous Reputation of George Buchanan 59 Chapter 3 George Buchanan and Covenanting Scholarship Introduction 77 The Problem of History 81 The Problem of Social Leadership 91 The Problem of Citations 100 Conclusion 106 Chapter 4 George Buchanan and the English Revolutions against the Stuarts Introduction 108 Reluctant Resistance: the Men of 1642 110 The Usage of Buchanan by the Regicides 113 The Attack on Resistance in Seventeenth-Century England 121 Buchanan, Grotius, and the Whigs of the 1680s 125 The Glorious Revolution and the Question of Resistance 133 Conclusion 138 4 Chapter 5 George Buchanan in Scotland, 1688-1788 Introduction 143 Whigs and Jacobites, 1689-c. 1756 149 Contract and Resistance: Buchanan and the Political Theory of the Scottish Enlightenment 161 Civil and Religious Liberty 173 Conclusion 186 Chapter 6 The American Revolution and the Atlantic Canon of Political Theory Introduction 190 The Sources of Resistance in America 196 The Scots-Irish and their Heritage of Resistance 204 Conclusion 213 Chapter 7 George Buchanan and the Era of the French Revolution Introduction 216 The Uses of Buchanan in Reformist and Loyalist Discourse 221 Buchanan and the Covenanting Tradition in the 1790s 226 The Scottish Pantheon of Civil and Religious Liberty 231 Not Dead Yet? Buchanan and the Covenanters in Nineteenth- Century Literature 238 Buchanan and the Covenanters in Nineteenth-Century Popular Culture 246 Conclusion 251 Conclusion: The Reputation(s) of George Buchanan in the Atlantic World 253 Bibliography 260 5 Acknowledgements This research was made by possible by a studentship awarded by the Student Awards Agency Scotland and later taken over by the Arts and Humanities Research Board. My thanks are due to the staff of the following libraries: the National Library of Scotland; Edinburgh University Library and the New College Library; Strathclyde University Library; and the Mitchell Library. Most particularly, I am grateful to the staff of Glasgow University Library Special Collections Department, who bore my demands always with patience and good humour. I have benefited enormously from the warm and congenial environment of the Scottish History Department of the University of Glasgow, especially from the Baillie Library at 9 University Gardens that has served as a valuable resource, a favourite workplace, and, when filled with postgraduates, a welcome distraction. My thanks are due to all the staff and postgraduates at Scottish History, particularly to Professor James Kirk for commenting on a draft of chapter one. I also thank James Coleman for many beneficial chats on the subjects of the Covenanters, civil and religious liberty in eighteenth and nineteenth-century Scotland, and methodological approaches to reputations and commemorations in Scottish history. Above all, I am grateful to my supervisor, Professor Cohn Kidd. His Honours module 'North Britons: Patriotism and Identity in Eighteenth-century Scotland' introduced me to such characters as George Buchanan, Thomas Ruddiman and, importantly, the mythical king Fergus I. He has always been generous with his time, an honest and good-natured critic, and he is an inspiring thinker, writer, and teacher. Finally, at a personal level, I thank my family and friends who have sustained me for these three years, and who have been forced to become acquainted with the mighty presence of George Buchanan. It is my father's wish that I might someday find gainful employment at such a bastion of industry as Woolworth's. I choose to take his words as a statement of approval for this, my less practical endeavour. My parents have been a constant source of support and encouragement, and this thesis is dedicated to them. 6 Chapter 1 The Politics and Religion of George Buchanan Introduction Following the publication of his short but intense political tract De lure Regni apud Scotos in 1579, it has been suggested, George Buchanan remained "an influential political theorist for at least the next two centuries." 1 Further investigation is required to add nuance to this generalisation and to illuminate the development of different understandings and misunderstandings of Buchanan's work, his character, and his career, in the centuries after his death. Buchanan's reputation in the Atlantic World had a fluctuating trajectory and was based less on what he wrote, than on how he was read. He was variously perceived as saint or sinner; champion for truth and the Protestant church or vile detractor of the character of Mary Queen of Scots; a prodigiously perceptive historian or a credulous one; a radical or a moderate theorist of resistance; a dangerous incendiary or, eventually, a voice compatible with British Revolution principles. In order to assess how his name and ideas have been used, misused and manipulated, Buchanan is first examined in his own context of sixteenth-century Scotland and sixteenth-century Europe. His approaches to the writing of history and political theory, as well as the development of his religious beliefs, are analysed in chapter one. Although Buchanan's reputation in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries was based to a considerable extent on his status as a Calvinist, a pillar of the Scottish Reformation, it is argued that his work can better be examined in the context of humanism rather than Calvinism. Chapter two considers approaches to historical reputations, and to the reputations of political theorists in particular. With its intellectual communities of Scotland, England, Ireland, and the American colonies, the Atlantic World generated many of the texts that would eventually coalesce as the Western canon of political theory. The Atlantic World is also used as a framework for the examination of contexts in which the question of resistance was debated in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and 'D. Allan, Virtue, Learning and the Scottish Enlightenment (Edinburgh, 1993), 67 footnote. 7 early nineteenth centuries. Following chapters illuminate the uses, faithful and unfaithful, to which Buchanan's name and ideas were put in these contexts, and also consider circumstances in which Buchanan was marginalized or ignored. In the seventeenth century, Scottish and English opponents of the Stuart dynasty and its style of government used Buchanan to justify varying levels of resistance against Charles I and his successors. Following the Glorious Revolution, the usage of Buchanan's name and ideas was connected to sensitivities about past theories and acts of resistance. Scottish Presbyterians sought to cast themselves as loyal subjects of their constitutional monarchy, whereas Scottish Episcopalians and English and Irish Anglicans were keen to shame Presbyterianism and Whiggism in the three kingdoms, blaming both for the instability of the seventeenth century. The American Revolution, considered in chapter six, was a point