J. CAMPBELL SMITH. DUNDEE, _December 1899_. CONTENTS CHAPTER I PAGE PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL 9 CHAPTER II CHARACTERISTICS 26 CHAPTER III CHARACTERISTICS (_continued_) 48 CHAPTER IV FURTHER CHARACTERISTICS 66 CHAPTER V BUCHANAN AND CALVINISM 89 CHAPTER VI BIOGRAPHICAL FACTS 111 EPILOGISTIC 138 INDEX 147 GEORGE BUCHANAN CHAPTER I PRELIMINARY AND GENERAL On the 21st July 1683, Lord William Russell was beheaded in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, because Charles II., F.D., who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one, thought it would help to keep alive the Stuart doctrine of the Divine right of kings. On the same day, the political writings of George Buchanan and one John Milton were, by decree of the learned and loyal University of Oxford, publicly burned in front of their Schools by the common hangman, because they were regarded as the most formidable and dangerous defences of the principles on account of which it had been considered judicious to kill Lord William Russell, and perhaps also in token that if Buchanan and Milton had not been dead they might have been burned too, along with their books. It is comforting to reflect that this same decree was subsequently burned with the same publicity--and by the same common hangman, one would hope.