George Buchanan

George Buchanan (Scottish Gaelic: Seòras Bochanan; February 1506 – 28 September 1582) was a Scottish historian and humanist scholar. According to historian Keith Brown, Buchanan was "the most profound intellectual sixteenth-century Scotland produced." His ideology of resistance to royal usurpation gained widespread acceptance during the Scottish Reformation. Brown says the ease with which King James VII was deposed in 1689 shows the power of Buchananite ideas.

His treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos, published in 1579, discussed the doctrine that the source of all political power is the people, and that the king is bound by those conditions under which the supreme power was first committed to his hands, and that it is lawful to resist, even to punish, tyrants.

The importance of Buchanan's writings is shown by the suppression of his work by James VI and the British legislatures in the century following their publication. It was condemned by an act of Parliament, the Treason (No. 2) Act 1584 (May c. 8 (S)), and burned by the University of Oxford in 1664 and 1683.