Buchanan

(George), Scotch historian and scholar, b. Killearn, Feb. 1506. Evincing an early love of study, he was sent to Paris at the age of fourteen. He returned to Scotland and became distinguished for his learning. James V. appointed him tutor to his natural son. He composed his Francis can us et Fratres , a satire on the monks, which hastened the Scottish reformation. This exposed him to the vengeance of the clergy. Not content with calling him Atheist, Archbishop Beaton had him arrested and confined in St. Andrew’s Castle, from whence he escaped and fled to England. Here he found, as he said, Henry VIII. burning men of opposite opinions at the same stake for religion. He returned to Paris, but was again subjected to the persecution of Beaton, the Scottish Amba ador. On the death of a patron at Bordeaux, in 1548, he was seized by the Inquisition and immured for a year and a half in a monastery, where he translated the Psalms into Latin. He eventually returned to Scotland, where he espoused the party of Moray. After a most active life, he died 28 Sept. 1582, leaving a History of Scotland, besides numerous poems, satires, and political writings, the most important of which is a work of republican tendency, De Jure Regni , the Rights of Kings .