page_title: George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh
section_title: Works
hierarchical_section_title: George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh / Works
caption_attribution_description: English: Title page of Mackenzie's Vindication of the Government in Scotland, 1691. The tract denouncing the Covenanters was published posthumously.
context_page_description: Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh was a Scottish lawyer, Lord Advocate, essayist and legal writer.
context_section_description: In private life Mackenzie was a cultivated and learned gentleman with literary tendencies. He published in 1660 Aretina, which has been called the first Scottish novel. He is remembered as the author of various graceful essays. A contemporary antiquarian, Alexander Nisbet, calls him "learned" and "renowned".
  Mackenzie wrote legal, political, and antiquarian books, including:
  The Science of Heraldry, Treated as a Part of the Civil Law of Nations: Wherein Reasons are Given for its Principles, and Etymologies of its Harder Terms (1680);
  Institutions of the Law of Scotland (1684);
  Jus Regium: Or the Just and Solid Foundations of Monarchy in General, and More Especially of the Monarchy of Scotland: Maintain'd Against Buchannan, Naphtali, Dolman, Milton, &c. (1684), a major royalist tract;
  A Vindication of the Government in Scotland (1691);
  Antiquity of the Royal Line of Scotland (1686);
  Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland from the Restoration of Charles II (1821).
  Mackenzie took part in the Midlothian trials for witchcraft in 1661, and defended the alleged witch Maevia. He later wrote at length of his experience with witchcraft trials. He did not endorse the sceptical position, but stated that witches were fewer than common belief made out. He attributed confessions to the use of torture.
  His Laws and Customs of Scotland in Matters Criminal (1678) was the first textbook of Scottish criminal law. In it Mackenzie defended the use of judicial torture in Scotland as legal. He said it was seldom used. In the aftermath of the Rye House Plot Charles II authorised the use of torture against William Spence, secretary to Archibald, Earl of Agyll, who was moved to Scotland. The Scottish privy council was reluctant, but eventually went beyond Scottish law in torturing Spence. Mackenzie visited William Carstares in prison in London, caught up in the same investigation, to warn him of the consequences of stubborn behaviour under questioning.
  Other works were:
  Religio Stoici (1663);
  A Moral Essay preferring Solitude to Public Employment (1665);
  Moral Gallantry (1667); and
  The Moral History of Frugality (1691).
caption: Title page of Mackenzie's 'Vindication', published in 1691
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