William Lauder

This essay demonstrates the importance of the little-known poet William Lauder to the literary culture of mid-sixteenth-century Scotland and compares his work to that of his contemporaries, David Lyndsay and Richard Maitland. It argues that Lauder’s mirror for princes, Ane Compendious and breve Tractate, Concernyng þe Office and dewtie of Kyngis, printed in 1556, combines elements of the Older Scots advisory tradition with Protestant reformist thinking. The essay compares this political ‘tractate’ to Lauder’s post-Reformation devotional poetry, which is less confident in secular authority but nevertheless adopts the interest in advice giving and adapts it to the spiritual lives of Lauder’s readers. These poems demand high standards of moral and ethical reform from their readers, and the audience’s wider engagement with scriptural texts. In encouraging reading, self-reform, and self-understanding, the poems in turn urge their audience to strive for social justice and order in the creation of a godly society.