Clan Buchanan

George Buchanan (b.1506)
This poet and protestant reformer was born in Killearn, Stirlingshire in 1506.Part of his education was spent in Paris from 1520 onwards, when he travelled extensively on the continent, fording the beginning of a literary career amid the intellectual ferment of the Reformation. In April 1562, only two years after his return to Scotland as a convert to Calvinism, he was appointed as tutor of classics to the young Mary, Queen of Scots.

His literary talents, however, were concentrated on his obscene attacks on the Queen, reputedly written in the most prosaic and elegant Latin, despite the Royal favour that he had received. These tracts circulated for centuries and came to taint the historical perspectives that we have of this period.

Following the abdication of Mary, he was appointed preceptor and tutor to the young James VI and is thus given credit for the monarch’s academic talent, although equally he turned the child James VI against his own mother, and helped shape a perverted character.