some of the nobility, who
were thought to have conspired against the king; and, in that matter,
the king being persuaded the Franciscans dealt insincerely, he commanded
Buchanan, who was then at court, (though he was ignorant of the disgusts
betwixt him and that order), to write a satyr upon them. He was loath to
offend either of them, and therefore, though he made a poem, yet it was
but short, and such as might admit of a doubtful interpretation, wherein
he satisfied neither party; not the king, who would have had a sharp and
stinging invective; nor the fathers neither, who looked on it as a
capital offence, to have any thing said of them but what was honourable.
So that receiving a second command to write more pungently against them,
he began that miscellany, which now bears the title of The Franciscan,
and gave it to the king. But shortly after, being made acquainted by his
friends at court, that cardinal Beaton sought his life, and had offered
the king a sum of money as a price for his head, he escaped out of
prison, and fled for England[36]. But there also things were at such an
uncertainty, that the very same day, and almost with one and the same
fire, the men of both factions (protestants and papists) were burnt;
Henry VIII. in his old age, being more intent on his own security, than
the purity or reformation of religion. This uncertainty of affairs in
England, seconded by his ancient acquaintance with the French, and the
courtesy natural to them, drew him again into that kingdom.

As soon as he came to Paris, he found cardinal Beaton, his utter enemy,
ambassador there; so that, to withdraw himself from his fury, at the
invitation of Andrew Govean, he went to Bourdeaux.----There he taught
three years in the schools, which were erected at the public cost. In
that time he composed four tragedies, which were afterwards occasionally
published. But that which he wrote first, called The Baptist, was
printed last, and next the Medea of Euripides. He wrote them in
compliance with the custom of the school, which was to have a play
written once a-year, that the acting of them might wean the French youth
from allegories, to which they had taken a false taste, and bring them
back, as much as possible, to a just imitation of the ancients. This
affair succeeding even almost beyond his hopes, he took more pains in
compiling the other two tragedies, called Jephtha and Alcestes, because
he thought they would fall under a severer s