Christian History Magazine Collection

John Knox provoked rulers, incited riots, and inspired a reformation in Scotland.

by R. Tudur Jones from Christian History magazine no. 46

John Knox was a strange and rather frightening character. He was narrow-minded and intolerant. He lacked generosity of spirit and loved to hate. But he possessed immense courage and feared no one.

In the pulpit, he was at his most powerful. He mesmerized thousands of Scots, who were prepared to lay their lives down for Protestantism at his behest. By his preaching, he molded both nobility and ordinary folk into a formidable fighting force and thus left his stamp on the Protestantism of Scotland for centuries to come.

“Base” Beginnings

The man who was to lead this great religious revolt and challenge the authority of monarchs had humble, or as Knox put it, “base” beginnings. He was born, probably in 1514, at Haddington, a small town of some 1,500 inhabitants south of Edinburgh. We do not know whether his father, William, was a merchant or a craftsman. But Knox’s humble background gave him an instinctive ability to communicate effectively with ordinary people.

He was able to avail himself of a good education, and he probably mastered the rudiments of Latin at a school in Haddington. Around 1529 he entered the University of St. Andrews and went on to study theology under distinguished theologian John Major, who had both criticized Luther’s theology and condemned abuses in the Catholic church.

Knox was ordained in April 1536, but that did not lead to a parish appointment because there was an excess of priests in Scotland. Since Knox had studied law, he became a notary in the neighborhood around Haddington and then a tutor to the sons of local lairds (lower-ranking nobility).

Dramatic events were unfolding in Scotland during Knox’s youth. The constant sea traffic between Scotland and Europe allowed Lutheran literature to be easily smuggled into the country. The port of Dundee became an early center of Protestant activity. Church authorities became alarmed by the emergence of this “heresy,” and they tried to suppress it.

In February 1528, Patrick Hamilton, an outspoken Protestant convert, was burned at the stake in St. Andrews—the first Protestant martyr in Scotland. But people began to ask why Hamilton had been executed, and when his heresies were explained, according to Knox, “Many began to call in doubt that which before they held for a certain verity.”

The outlook for Scottish Protestants brightened in 1543 when the regent for the infant Mary Queen of Scots initiated a pro-English, and therefore Protestant, policy. He encouraged Bible reading and promoted preaching by reformers. He appointed Thomas Guilliame, a converted friar, and John Rough, a converted monk, as his chaplains. They engaged at once in preaching campaigns throughout central Scotland. The preaching of Guilliame had a dramatic influence on John Knox: it made a Protestant of him.

From Bodyguard to Preacher

In the mid-1540s, the authorities abandoned their Reformation policies and began threatening Protestants. Protestant preacher George Wishart nonetheless courageously proclaimed his convictions, traveling about the country. Impressed with what he heard about Wishart, Knox joined Wishart’s band, who acted as a kind of bodyguard for Wishart—Knox, in fact, armed himself with a two-handed sword.

For five weeks, he followed Wishart until it became clear the church authorities would soon arrest the preacher. Although Knox and his friends wished to accompany him at his arrest, Wishart sent them home and faced his accusers alone.

Cardinal David Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews, the religious capital of Scotland, ordered Wishart’s arrest in January 1546. Wishart was tried, found guilty of heresy, strangled, and burned on March 1. For Knox, Wishart was the supreme hero—”a man of such graces as before him were never heard within this realm, yea, and are rare to be found yet in any man.”

The execution of Wishart aroused fury amongst his supporters, and they quickly resolved on a terrible revenge. Two months later, a party of sixteen nobles assassinated Beaton and mutilated and insulted his body in the most obscene manner. More than revenge, it was a revolutionary response to Beaton’s Catholic policy (Beaton favored a French-Scottish alliance intended to hold Protestant England at bay). The Castilians, as the leaders of the coup were called, holed up in St. Andrews Castle as a fleet of French ships lay siege to it.

Knox was not privy to the murder, but he approved of it wholeheartedly on the principle that God often allows evil men to mediate punishment. Now his own life was in jeopardy, and he moved from one laird’s house to another to avoid detection. Finally, during a break in the siege, he joined the Castilians at St. Andrews Castle.

Among the Castilians was one of the most powerful politicians in Scotland, Henry Balnaves. He and preacher John Rough were impressed by Knox’s abilities as they watched him teach students. They asked him to become the castle’s next chaplain, but Knox refused, saying they had no authority to grant him such a call.

Rough persisted, and as he preached on the election of ministers one Sunday, he publicly called upon Knox to undertake the office of preacher! He then asked the congregation to endorse his call, which it did with acclamation. Knox was overwhelmed and reduced to tears. At first he declined, but over the next few days, he realized that a call by a congregation was as valid a call as any.

One event in particular convinced him. As Knox was debating his call, he attended a service at the parish church. The dean of the church was defending Catholicism, doing so, he claimed, on the authority of the church, the bride of Christ.

Knox could take it no longer, and from his pew, he stood up and interrupted him saying that the Roman Church was no bride of Christ but a harlot! The congregation loudly demanded that Knox justify his remark in a sermon on the following Sunday—which he did. It was the commencement of the public career of one of the most powerful preachers of the Reformation era.