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He devoted his later life to historical studies, and produced his famous History of Scotland in twelve books, De Maria Regina ejusque conspiratione, in which he attacked the reputation of the Queen, and De jure regni apud Scotos, a book remarkable for the liberalism of the ideas which were therein expressed.
It was not quite for nothing that James had had for his tutor the republican George Buchanan, one of the first opponents of monarchical absolutism in his famous De Jure Regni apud Scotos; nor did he ever quite forget the noble words in which at his first Parliament he thus defined for ever the position of a constitutional king: "That I am a servant it is most true, that as I am head and governor of all the people in my dominion who are my natural vassals and subjects, considering them in numbers and distinct ranks: so, if we will take the whole people as one body and mass, then, as the head is ordained for the body and not the body for the head, so must a righteous king know himself to be ordained for his people and not his people for him. . . . I will never be ashamed to confess it my principal honour to be the great servant of the Commonwealth."
His chief remaining works were De Jure Regni apud Scotos , against absolutism, and his History of Scotland, which was pub. immediately before his death. Though he had borne so great a part in the affairs of his country, and was the first scholar of his age, he d. so poor that he left no funds to meet the expenses of his interment.
His book was an answer to the Sacra Sancta Regum Majestas, in which the Divine Right of kings, and the duty of passive obedience, had been strenuously upheld. Its appearance in 1644 created a great sensation, and threw into the shade Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos, which had hitherto held the field on the popular side.
"The burden of George Buchanan's De Jure Regni apud Scotos is the lawfulness or righteousness of the removal by assassination or any other fitting or convenient means of incompetent kings, whether heinously wicked and tyrannical or merely unwise and weak of purpose; and he cites as a case in point and an 'example in time coming, the murder of James III., which, if it were only on account of the assassin's hideous travesty of the last offices of the Church, would deserve to be held in unique and everlasting detestation."
The worst that can be said against him during these times is, that his name appears with the sum of 100 pounds against it, as one of those "who were to be entertained in Scotland by pensions out of England;" and Ruddiman, of course, comments on the fact by saying that Buchanan "was at length to act under the threefold character of malcontent, reformer, and pensioner:" but it gives no proof whatsoever that Buchanan ever received any such bribe; and in the very month, seemingly, in which that list was written 10th March, 1579 Buchanan had given a proof to the world that he was not likely to be bribed or bought, by publishing a book, as offensive probably to Queen Elizabeth as it was to his own royal pupil; namely, his famous "De Jure Regni apud Scotos," the very primer, according to many great thinkers, of constitutional liberty.
Rex in sua acie Scotos et Muranenses retinuit, nonnullos etiam de militibus Anglis et Francis ad sui corporis custodiam deputavit." Aelred, De Bello Standardii, Migne, Patrologia Latina, vol. cxcv, col. 702-712.
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