ABSTRACT
In 1781, in an address to the Glasgow Literary Society, John Anderson, holder of the Chair of Natural Philosophy at the University of Glasgow and eventual founder of Anderson’s Institution, proposed that a monument be built on Buchanan Street, by public subscription, to commemorate the life and works of George Buchanan. According to Anderson, Buchanan was a proponent of modern and rational ideas, and his renowned De Iure Regni apud Scotos ‘anticipates the political Doctrines which have become so famous in this Island of late years’. Indeed, Buchanan might be seen as a prophet of the Revolution of 1688: ‘To set aside the Monarch who misbehaves and to exalt another Heir of [the] Line; is no more than what was done at the last Revolution of the freest state that has ever existed.’1 This monument was never built, but Anderson’s proposal is suggestive of the trajectory of Buchanan’s reputation in the eighteenth century.
