
The Scottish Renaissance humanist
George Buchanan gave a long list of Scottish Kings in his history of Scotland—published in Latin as ''Rerum Scoticarum Historia'' in 1582—most of whom are now considered by historians to be figures of legend, or completely misrepresented. The list went back around 1900 years from his time, and began with
Fergus I
Fergus may refer to:
Given name or surname
*Fergus (name), including lists of people and fictional and mythological characters
Places
*Fergus, Ontario, Canada
* River Fergus, County Clare, Ireland
*Lake Fergus, South Island, New Zealand
*Loc ...
.
James VI of Scotland
James VI and I (James Charles Stuart; 19 June 1566 – 27 March 1625) was King of Scotland as James VI from 24 July 1567 and King of England and Ireland as James I from the union of the Scottish and English crowns on 24 March 1603 until hi ...
, who was Buchanan's pupil, adopted the story of Fergus I as his ancestor, and the antiquity of the line was emphasised by the
House of Stuart.
Dynastic importance
The genealogy of Scottish kings, going back to Fergus mac Ferchar (i.e.
Fergus I
Fergus may refer to:
Given name or surname
*Fergus (name), including lists of people and fictional and mythological characters
Places
*Fergus, Ontario, Canada
* River Fergus, County Clare, Ireland
*Lake Fergus, South Island, New Zealand
*Loc ...
) and beyond, was in place by the middle of the 13th century when it was recited at the 1249 inauguration of
Alexander III of Scotland. In 1301
Baldred Bisset
Baldred Bisset ( 1260 – 1311?) was a medieval Scottish lawyer.
Life
During the Scottish Wars of Independence, he was responsible for the Scottish submissions to the papal curia of 1301.
Along with his colleagues William Frere and William of ...
was involved in a hearing at the
Papal Curia, on the Scottish side of the debate on
Edward I of England
Edward I (17/18 June 1239 – 7 July 1307), also known as Edward Longshanks and the Hammer of the Scots, was King of England and Lord of Ireland from 1272 to 1307. Concurrently, he ruled the duchies of Aquitaine and Gascony as a vassa ...
's claims, and at least helped prepare material dealing with the mythological history that was being adduced as relevant, on both sides.

The question of the antiquity of the Scottish royal lineage, and even the details of the associated
origin myth
An origin myth is a myth that describes the origin of some feature of the natural or social world. One type of origin myth is the creation or cosmogonic myth, a story that describes the creation of the world. However, many cultures have stor ...
, became particularly significant from 1542 when
Mary, Queen of Scots
Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587), also known as Mary Stuart or Mary I of Scotland, was Queen of Scotland from 14 December 1542 until her forced abdication in 1567.
The only surviving legitimate child of James V of Scot ...
came to the Scottish throne. Buchanan alluded to Mary's long ancestry in his ''Epithalamium'' written for her 1559 marriage to
Francis II of France
Francis II (french: François II; 19 January 1544 – 5 December 1560) was King of France from 1559 to 1560. He was also King consort of Scotland as a result of his marriage to Mary, Queen of Scots, from 1558 until his death in 1560.
He ...
. In the period before Mary's betrothal, a marriage to Prince Edward, the future
Edward VI of England
Edward VI (12 October 1537 – 6 July 1553) was King of England and Ireland from 28 January 1547 until his death in 1553. He was crowned on 20 February 1547 at the age of nine. Edward was the son of Henry VIII and Jane Seymour and the first En ...
, was much discussed. As part of that debate, the
list of legendary kings of Britain
The following list of legendary kings of Britain derives predominantly from Geoffrey of Monmouth's circa 1136 work ''Historia Regum Britanniae'' ("the History of the Kings of Britain"). Geoffrey constructed a largely fictional history for the B ...
became involved, in the form of the "Brutus myth", promoted by
Edward Hall over the doubts of
Polydore Vergil
Polydore Vergil or Virgil (Italian: ''Polidoro Virgili''; commonly Latinised as ''Polydorus Vergilius''; – 18 April 1555), widely known as Polydore Vergil of Urbino, was an Italian humanist scholar, historian, priest and diplomat, who spent ...
. Publicists on the English side of the argument, including
John Elder,
James Henrisoun
James Henrisoun (died before 1570) was a Scottish merchant of Edinburgh, and writer in favour of Anglo-Scottish union.
Life
Successful in business, Henrisoun traded with Middelburg in the Netherlands, and encountered the Protestant Reformation th ...
, and William Lamb, had cast doubt on Scottish history.
When James VI entered Edinburgh in 1579 the pageantry included a public posting of the genealogy of the Scottish kings; and when his son Charles I visited in 1633, portraits of
107 kings were displayed, some of which (by
George Jamesone
George Jamesone (or Jameson) (c. 1587 – 1644) was a Scottish painter who is regarded as Scotland's first eminent portrait-painter.
Early years
He was born in Aberdeen, where his father, Andrew Jamesone, was a stonemason. Jamesone attended t ...
) survive. Another series of 110 imagined portraits of the monarchs from the list was painted for
Charles II by
Jacob de Wet II, and hung in
Holyrood Palace
The Palace of Holyroodhouse ( or ), commonly referred to as Holyrood Palace or Holyroodhouse, is the official residence of the British monarch in Scotland. Located at the bottom of the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, at the opposite end to Edinbu ...
. The de Wet portrait collection later became a noted sight for tourists, for example as written about by
John Macky
John Macky (died 1726) was a Scottish spy. He was the first person to inform the British authorities of James II's intended invasion of England in 1692 after the former king had fled from France to England. In October 1693 he was made inspector o ...
, ''A Journey through Scotland''.
Historiography of Buchanan's list
While ''Rerum Scoticarum Historia'' was published only in the year of Buchanan's death, he had worked on it during much of his life. It was published with his ''De jure regni apud Scotos'', first printed in 1579. Of the two works, the ''Historia'' for Buchanan served as a source of precedents on dealing with bad kings (tyrants in the list inevitably come to a sorry end at the hands of the people, in line with Buchanan's
monarchomach position), while the ''De jure'' is cast as a humanist dialogue between Buchanan himself and
Thomas Maitland, and concentrates on classical exemplars. Both works were dedicated to James VI. King James came to regard the chronicles of Buchanan and
John Knox
John Knox ( gd, Iain Cnocc) (born – 24 November 1572) was a Scottish minister, Reformed theologian, and writer who was a leader of the country's Reformation. He was the founder of the Presbyterian Church of Scotland.
Born in Giffordgat ...
as "infamous invectives".
The king-list of the ''Historia'' was, therefore, in that work, only incidental to Buchanan's purpose in the book, whatever later uses it may have been put to. After the later scholarly work of
Thomas Innes, this list was given little credence in its initial parts. It was, however, the culmination of centuries of development of king-lists for the
Kingdom of Scotland
The Kingdom of Scotland (; , ) was a sovereign state in northwest Europe traditionally said to have been founded in 843. Its territories expanded and shrank, but it came to occupy the northern third of the island of Great Britain, sharing a la ...
. Much fictional material had been introduced into these lists by the humanist
Hector Boece, writing half a century before Buchanan.
Peter Hume Brown
Peter Hume Brown, FBA (17 December 1849 – 1 December 1918) was a Scottish historian and professor who played an important part in establishing Scottish history as a significant academic discipline. As well as teaching and writing, he spent 16 ...
in his biography of Buchanan describes him as somewhat more sceptical than Boece in what he accepted as historical; but less so than
John Mair, writing earlier. Buchanan has been called inconsistent in his treatment of classical sources since his rejection of the legend of
Gathelus does not extend to the early Scottish kings, who are equally unsupported by classical authors.
Writers who perpetuated the Boece tradition, as put into form by Buchanan, included:
*
Alexander Gardyne
Alexander Garden or Gardyne (c. 1585 - c. 1642) was a Scottish poet from Aberdeenshire.
Life and works
He is believed to have graduated from Marischal College before 1609 when a work of his was published calling him '' Mr.'', implying he had t ...
, ''Theatre of the Scotish Kings'', published 1709 by
James Watson
James Dewey Watson (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist, and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and ...
*
David Hume of Godscroft
*
Gilbert Gray
*
James Ussher
*
James Wallace, '' The History of the Kingdom of Scotland from Fergus the First King to the Union'' (1724)
*
John Johnston, ''Inscriptiones Historicæ Regum Scotorum, continuata annorum serie a Fergusio I. ad Jacobum VI.'' (1602)
The antiquity of the line was attacked by
William Lloyd, who argued that Scotland was not settled before the 6th century;
George Mackenzie George Mackenzie may refer to:
People
*George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1636–1691), Scottish lawyer
*George Mackenzie, 1st Earl of Cromartie (1630–1714), Scottish Secretary of State
*George Mackenzie, 2nd Earl of Seaforth (died 1651), Highland cl ...
published the 1685 ''Defence of the Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland'' against Lloyd, and a sequel the next year against
Edward Stillingfleet, who had given a sceptical account of Boece's history in Chapter V of his ''Origines Britannicae''. The work of Innes, which in effect terminated the scholarly debate, was published in 1729, but the tradition continued.
*Francis Nichols, ''The British Compendium'' (1741)
*
James Anderson, ''Royal Genealogies'' (1732). This book was based on a work of
Johann Hübner
Johann Hübner (17 March 1668 – 21 May 1731) was a German geographer and scholar, who taught by the question and answer method.
Life
Johann Hübner attended school in Zittau before studying theology, poetry, rhetoric, geography and history at t ...
, but with Anderson's additions. The king-list is Table 499, attributed to Boece and Buchanan.
*
William Guthrie.
Subsequently,
John Pinkerton
John Pinkerton (17 February 1758 – 10 March 1826) was a Scottish antiquarian, cartographer, author, numismatist, historian, and early advocate of Germanic racial supremacy theory.
He was born in Edinburgh, as one of three sons to Ja ...
and
William Forbes Skene contributed to the study of the king-lists. Reference works continued, however, to copy Buchanan's list, and the mythological history took many years to drop out of circulation, persisting in print as factual well into the 19th century (for example the fourth edition of the ''
Encyclopædia Britannica
The (Latin for "British Encyclopædia") is a general knowledge English-language encyclopaedia. It is published by Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.; the company has existed since the 18th century, although it has changed ownership various time ...
'' (1810), the ''
Encyclopædia Perthensis
The ''Encyclopædia Perthensis'' was a publishing project around the Morison Press in Perth, Scotland undertaken in the 1790s, with the involvement of James Morison. Morison went into partnership with Colin Mitchel and Co.
Editions
The ''Ency ...
'' (1816), the ''
London Encyclopedia'' (1829), and the individual kings in reference books by
George Crabb and
John Platts).
Legendary content
See
list of Scottish monarchs
The monarch of Scotland was the head of state of the Kingdom of Scotland. According to tradition, the first King of Scots was Kenneth I MacAlpin (), who founded the state in 843. Historically, the Kingdom of Scotland is thought to have grown ...
for the view of contemporary historians of Scotland. The first historical figure in Buchanan's list is