The Schoolmaster
The schoolmaster, or preceptor as they were commonly known at the time, is Peter Young who, along with George Buchanan, was tutor to James VI of Scotland (later James I of England). Young is a lesser-known yet key member of the Scottish court during James’s long minority, and the story covers the period 1570 to 1583, when the king is aged between four and seventeen.
James has inherited the throne after his mother, Mary Queen of Scots, fled to England. Inevitably he’s at the center of ongoing power and religious battles between rival groups of nobles trying to control him and thus the country – he’s even kidnapped at one point. Peter Young, as his tutor, is a place of calm and kindly reason especially as a counterbalance to the king’s other tutor, Buchanan, who does not spare the rod, even on a king.
Young manages the perils of court life, remaining respected by all and never losing the king’s affection, even when he is drawn into the kidnapping plot. Tvordi gives a real sense of who Young was and skillfully walks the tightrope of the controversy over whether the lonely boy king indeed became the lover of his French cousin, who he had made Duke of Lennox. This reader would have appreciated a little more sense of James at times and what he was like to teach, and Buchanan is shown in a kindlier light then he perhaps deserves, but these are minor quibbles. The Schoolmaster is impeccably researched historical fiction which gives great insight into the period and into the honest, exceptionally clever and caring person Peter Young is said to have been. All in all, an absorbing read.
