SOURCE: MacDonald, Robert H. “A Disputed Maxim of State in Forth Feasting (1619).” Journal of the History of Ideas 32, no. 2 (April-June 1971): 295-98.

In the essay below, MacDonald analyzes Drummond's ideas of kingship and politics, and compares the poet's beliefs to the popular opinions of his day.

Among the holograph manuscripts of the Scottish poet William Drummond of Hawthornden is a rough draft of a letter probably intended for his friend at court, Sir William Alexander, Earl of Stirling.¹ It consists of a defense of a line in Drummond's own poem Forth Feasting, a piece written to celebrate the return to Scotland in 1619 of King James VI and I. Alexander seems to have written to Drummond telling him that King James himself had objected to the words, “No Guard so sure as Loue vnto a Crowne,”² that they were disputed as “a maxime of state,” and that “the contrarie was...