ABSTRACT
On 19 April 1664, the Scottish Privy Council issued a Proclamation against ‘an old seditious Pamphlet’. It warned that, despite the blessing of the Restoration, ‘some seditious and ill-affected persons endeavour to infuse the principles of rebellion in the minds of many good Subjects’. For that end, they had ‘adventured to translate in the English Tongue, De Iure Regni apud Scotos, whereof Mr George Buchanan was the author’, and had ‘dispersed many Copies of the said Translation, which may corrupt the affections of the Subjects, and alienate their minds from their obedience to the Laws and his Majesties Royal Authority’. Noting that Buchanan’s work had been condemned by an Act of Parliament in 1584, the Council ordered that all copies of ‘the said Pamphlet or Book’ be handed over to its Clerk, and it prohibited anyone from copying or dispersing the new translation. Those who contravened this order, would be considered ‘seditious persons, and disaffected to Monarchical Government’, and would be ‘proceeded against’ ‘with all rigour’.2
