ABSTRACT
Writers of the Civil War period searched for origins, origins of plots both literary and political, in order to make intelligible the revolutionary upheavals they were experiencing. The return to the origin could demand a revisiting and revision of classical or Biblical history, most brilliantly in the case of Paradise Lost.1 The search for origins could also lead writers to more recent history for clues into the nature and causes of the nation’s troubles, which would bring them to use as a source and model Buchanan’s exploration of tyranny and resistance in the histories of Scotland and of other ancient and modern states. Sempill and others in the tragic mode had turned to similar histories and legends to trace the origins of Mary’s tyranny. Indeed tragedy had long been associated with tyranny,2 and at the start of the war, Buchanan’s tragedy about Herod’s beheading of John the Baptist, Baptistes, was translated as Tyranicall Government Anatomized (London, 1642/43) and published by order of Parliament. Tragedies, nonetheless, were written not only against royal tyrants. The pathos they evoke could just as easily build public sympathy for a royal victim. Writers from all camps turned to tragic histories to know the origins of contemporary tragedies and to use them to create and influence the new public.
