THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF ADAM BLACKWOOD

Abstract

The Scot Adam Blackwood (1539–1613), often cited though seemingly no longer much read, studied in Paris under two of the leading humanist scholars of his time, their influence upon his thinking being profound. A staunch supporter and protégé of Mary, queen of Scots, he published in 1575 the first of his political tracts, the De coniunctione religionis et imperii, in which he argued for stability in religion as the necessary underpinning of political order, and against resistance to the monarch, seen as divinely authorized and the sole law-giver. Six years later he produced his Pro regibus apologia, a rebuttal of George Buchanan's De jure regni apud Scotos. Polemical in tone, this work of Blackwood's nevertheless developed further his view of the monarch as the principle of unity and cohesion necessary to the existence of any body politic. In both of these works he deployed a sophisticated array of legal and philosophical arguments whilst pursuing ultimately irenic purposes. But Mary Stewart's execution in 1587 drew from him a diatribe against Elizabeth I where such purposes succumbed to his outraged sensibilities and his combative rhetorical style.