Dr Mason has edited, and powerfully helped in writing, a series of essays which in the first place examine the political discourse concerned with a ‘matter of Scotland’. The period is the sixteenth century and the medium of discourse is print. We are therefore looking at an age in which historians once conventionally located the emergence of ‘national monarchies’, and indeed ‘nation’ and ‘monarchy’ are organizing concepts in the discourse before us. In such an age it would be reasonable also to look for the emergence of canons of authoritative literature, invented either by contemporaries or in retrospect by subsequent authors and authorities. Canons are to be mistrusted, lest they come to control our minds as they may have controlled those of others; nevertheless, in organizing a new field of study – and we are still exploring ‘the unknown subject’ – it can be of experimental value to construct a canon and then enquire if it needs to be deconstructed. Let it be suggested, then, that scholars are now in a position to organize (should they decide to do so) a ‘history of Scottish political thought’ around a canon or succession of prominent authors, minimally consisting of John Mair, Hector Boece, John Knox, George Buchanan, James VI (and I), Sir Thomas Craig and (if we reach as far as the covenanting period) Samuel Rutherford.