The “King’s Bloody Advocate” or “Noble wit of Scotland”? Restoration Scotland and the case of Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh, 1636/38-1691 : neostoicism, politics and the origins of the Scottish enlightenment
Author(s)
Advisor
Date
2017-02Publisher
Bilkent University
Language
English
Type
ThesisItem Usage Stats
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Abstract
The aim of this thesis is to assess Sir George Mackenzie’s (1636/38-1691) life allinclusively,
deed and word, by taking his professed stoicism as the unifying
force in his struggles to combat a “bigot age”. Remembered on the one hand
as “Bloody Mackenzie” due to his vigorous prosecutions of Covenanters as
Lord Advocate, and known to his contemporaries as the “Noble wit of Scotland,”
and “the brightest man in the nation” on the other, Mackenzie suffers a
contested legacy. The analogy to Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde made by his biographer
thus persists to this day, because Mackenzie’s public career and literary
output have not been scrutinized comprehensively. This thesis presents Mackenzie’s
life to be thoroughly consistent, but also as focally uniform in its battle
against a benighted age, most emblematically found in the Covenanting
mindset. This contestation against what he saw as a fanatical and zealot religiosity
makes Mackenzie a candidate of the seeds from which Scottish Enlightenment
germinated. Accordingly, in the following investigation, Mackenzie’s
life is first accounted (Chapter II), and subsequently amended by an exposition
of the literature on his literary and public career (Chapter III). A brief discussion
of the Covenanters then establishes the antithetical counterpart to Mackenzie’s
ideological position (Chapter IV). Five stoically moulded and continuous
aspects of Mackenzie’s public career and literary output is identified in the
ensuing section (Chapter V), to then be further-used to illustrate the potential
of Mackenzie for the students of the Scottish Enlightenment (Chapter VI).
Keywords
Bloody MackenzieEarly Modern Intellectual History
Enlightenment
Neostoicism
Restoration Scotland