Bridging the Continental divide: neo-Latin and its cultural role in Jacobean Scotland, as seen in the Delitiae Poetarum Scotorum (1637)

The known facts of Hercules Rollock's early life are few. Born around 1546 in Dundee to George Rollock, a burgess of the town, 1 he attended St Salvator's College at the University of St Andrews between 1564 and 1568, graduating MA. 2 His first publication was a prefatory epigram appended to Alexander Hepburn's Grammaticae artis prima rudimenta (Antwerp, 1568). 3 Rollock's first professional position after graduation was the post of regent at King's College Aberdeen, where a purge of the recusant Catholic teaching staff had recently been carried out by the Regent Moray. Along with the new principal Alexander Arbuthnott and subprincipal James Lawson, Rollock was hand-picked by the kirk's General Assembly in 1569 to ensure that King's was transformed into a fully protestant college, suggesting that he was sufficiently committed to the reformed cause to be deemed suitable for such a task. 4

Sadly, the only mention of Rollock in the university record is his subscription in the college register inidicating his position as regent on 19 April 1572. However, his first long extant poem, 'On the wretched state of Scotland, on account of internal war, contempt for God, and the pernicious tarrying of Papists in her', was penned during his time there between December 1572 and March 1573. 5 Like Patrick Adamson, who had been appointed as a visitor to the north-east by the general assembly in December 1563 and wrote a poem attacking the widespread Catholic recusancy that he witnessed there, 6 Rollock also found Catholicism alive and well and was prompted to write an attack upon it. The first half of this 217-line poem condemns the complete destruction of society as a result of the Marian Civil War (1567-73), and frequently echoes the imagery and tropes of De Bello Civili, Lucan's great epic on the Roman Civil War (49-45BC) between Julius Caesar and Gnaeus Pompeius Magnus. The second half is a diatribe against the specific situation of Catholic recusancy in Scotland and the pope's repeated attempts to win nations across the world to his faith through cunning, witchcraft and the agents (both foreign monarchs and Catholic priests) he keeps in his thrall. While the poem itself is over-long and repetitive, Rollock's handling of these stock themes is vivid and, on occasion, powerful.

The poem opens with a brief recitation of the story of the arrival of the Scottish people, as the descendants of Gathelus and Scota, in the British Isles. Rollock picks up on many of the key tropes of this story seen in other contemporary poetic accounts, particularly their flight from Egypt. 7 Rollock uses the story to underscore the fact that the Scots have seen off every external enemy they have faced since antiquity, including the Picts:

Rollock returns repeatedly throughout the first half of the poem to the idea that Scotland's own citizens are now swiftly bringing about the destruction its enemies never could. In lines 20-28, Rollock lays out starkly his disgust at the internecine battles between the supporters of the infant James VI on the one hand and those loyal to the deposed Queen Mary on the other, which has left wives bereaved of their spouses, children orphaned, and youth dead before their time:

Comment on contemporary events here also allows us to securely date the poem to late 1572 or early 1573. At lines 44-54 Rollock references the deaths of the first three regents of the young James VI (the earls Moray, Lennox and Mar) and the accession of James Douglas, the fourth Earl of Morton as regent:

Moray and Lennox - the 'two betrayed' - were assassinated and killed in a military skirmish in January 1570 and September 1571 respectively, while Mar died suddenly in October 1572 (a contemporary rumour suggested he was poisoned). The 'stock' ('stirpem') could be a reference to his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, who although not dead had been forced to abdicate in favour of James in July 1567. James' accession is 'fortunate' ('faelici') as a young protestant boy-king has replaced the Catholic queen.

The poem also mentions the recent death of John Knox, who at lines 80-82 'has returned to the shores of the heaven-dwellers' ('remeavit ad oras Caelicolum') and 'rejoices in the deserved stars' ('meritis ... gaudeat astris'), and so does not have to see the shameful and ignominious state that the Scottish church has fallen into as a result of the civil war. Morton's appointment and the death of Knox both took place on Monday 24 November 1572. However, the poem makes no mention of the Pacification of Perth which ended the civil war in March 1573, 8 and so it seems reasonable to conclude that this poem was completed before Rollock left for France at some point in 1573.

In the second half of the poem (l. 95-217) Rollock launches into a blistering anti-Catholic diatribe, showing how strong his commitment to the reformed church was. Rollock argues that the continued depredations on the kingdom have left it open to attack from the forces of Catholic Europe, and that the pope, as antichrist, desires nothing less than the souls of men as his due sacrifice. Rollock portrays the pope as 'the minister of Erebus' ('Erebique minister') and a 'wretch' ('miser') whose quest for dominance over the world stems from his desire as an Italian 9 to see the former glories of the ancient Latin race restored from the state of decline into which they have fallen. As an agent of Satan he is able to use 'abominable' ('infandum') arts of magic to charm the monarchs of Europe and turn them against one another. As Rollock notes at lines 131-138, because he is too cowardly to venture out into the world himself, he sends his priestly acolytes ('mystae') to do his bidding:

The poem ends on a bleak note, with the Scots so lost in internecine slaughter that they do not notice Catholic Europe gearing up to conquer them, or the impending wrath of God that is coming to wipe the nation from the face of the earth for their atrocities. Rollock ends (l. 216-217) with an appeal to God to bring the people back under His protection, and to 'turn the rebel to the Lord, and hostile fury against its own limbs' ('Dominoque rebellem,/ inque suos artus hostilem verte furorem').

Contempt for religious warfare and the disturbance of the natural order of civil society through rebellion was thus the first major issue that Rollock explored at length in his poetry, and 'De Miseru Statu Scotiae' is fascinating for the poetic perspective it provides on the Marian Civil War. The theme of destruction and despair caused by religious civil war was one that Rollock would also return to, this time in the context of the French Wars of Religion, during his extended period of study in France in the latter half of the 1570s. This will be addressed in a future feature.