Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 2.djvu/118

entitled "How Dunbar was desyred to be ane frier," and a bitter satire upon the impudence and hypocrisy of the Franciscans. This piece of raillery excited the utmost hostility on the part of its objects, and to avoid their vengeance, which he had every reason to dread, Buchanan had determined to retire to Paris, where he hoped to be able to resume his former situation in the college of St Barbe. James V., however, took him under his protection, and retained him as preceptor to his natural son James Stuart, not the prior of St Andrews, whose mother was of the family of Mar, but one of the same baptismal name who held the abbacies of Melrose and Kelso, and whose mother was Elizabeth Schaw, of the family of Sauchie, and who died in the year 1548. James, who about this time was not satisfied with the conduct of the clergy, in regard to a conspiracy against his life, said to have been entered into by some of the nobility, sent for Buchanan, and not aware that he had already rendered himself obnoxious to the Franciscans, commanded him to write a satire against then. Wishing to gratify the king, and yet give as little additional ground of offence to the friars as possible, Buchanan wrote his Palinodia in two parts, a covert satire, which he hoped might afford no ground of open complaint to those against whom it was directed. The king, himself a poet coarse and licentious, did not at all relish this delicate kind of irony, and it wounded the ecclesiastics still more painfully than its predecessor the Somnium; so that, as it usually happens in an attempt to please one party without offending the other, the poet's labour proved vain. Finding it impossible to propitiate the friars, and the king still insisting upon their vices being fully and fairly exposed, he at last gave full scope to his indignation at the impudence, ignorance, impiety, and sensuality that distinguished the whole order, almost without an individual exception, in his poem entitled “Franciscanus," one of the most pungent satires to be found in any language. In this composition Buchanan had little occasion to exercise his fancy, facts were so abundant. He had but to embody in flowing language, what was passing before all men's eyes, and depict the clergy as the most contemptible and the most depraved of human beings, who, besides being roblers of the poor, lived, the far greater part of them, in the open and avowed practice of the post loathsome debauchery. Still they were the most powerful body in the state; and after the death of Magdalene,who had been bred under her aunt, the queen of Navarre, a protestant, and was friendly to the cause, they gained an entire ascendancy over the too facile King, who had not the grace to protect the tutor of his son from the effects of their rage, occasioned by poems that had been written at his own express command. Towards the end of the year 1538, measures were taken for the total suppression of the new opinions, and in February following, five persons were committed to the flames; nine saved their lives by burning their bills, as it was called, or in other words recanting. Among the rest George Buchanan was on this occasion seized, and to secure ample vengeance upon liim, Cardinal Beaton offered the king a sum of money for his life; a piece of supererogatory wickedness, for which there was not the smallest occasion, as the prejudices of his judges would infallibly have secured his condemnation, had he been brought before any of their tribunals; but aware of the mortal enmity of his accusers, he fled into England. By the way he happily escaped a pestilential distemper, which was at that time desolating the north of England, and when he arrived in London, experienced the protection of an English knight, Sir John Rainsford, who both supplied his immediate necessities, and protected him from the fury of the papists, to whom he was now every where obnoxious. On this occasion it was that he addressed himself to Henry VIII. and to his minister Cromwell, both of whom treated him with neglect. Several of his little pieces written at this time attest the straits to which he was reduced England at that period had few at-