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John Knox

John Knox is considered to be the greatest Reformer in the history of Scotland.

Knox's early years
The exact place and date of his birth is not known with certainty, but it is generally accepted to be a street named "Giffordgate" in the Scottish town of Haddington in East Lothian, 16 miles east of Edinburgh, about 1505. His father was William Knox, was a merchant or craftsman, who fought at the Battle of Flodden - he claimed in communications with Mary Bothwell in 1562 that his family were dependents of Hepburn of Hailes whose hereditary castle was within a few miles of Haddington - and his mother was an educated woman named Sinclair - probably one of the Sinclairs of Northrig. He had a brother, William, who later became a successful merchant too.

His father William Knox died at the Battle of Flodden in 1513, and the boys were taken in by a wealthy family. John obtained a liberal education in grammar school, and at the age of sixteen he was sent to pursue his studies at the University of Glasgow. The name “John Knox” is first recorded among the records of the University of Glasgow, where Knox enrolled in 1522.

There, he is stated to have studied under John Major - also a native of Haddington - who was a professor of philosophy and theology and recognised as one of the greatest scholars of his time and great intellectuals of Europe. Majors had previously been the foremost scholastic theologian at the University of Paris. Major was at Glasgow in 1522 and at St. Andrews in 1531. Unlike the ordinary teachers of theology, Majors did not lecture only on Peter Lombard's Books of the Sentences (the leading textbook of Scholastic Theology), but introduced his students to the text of the Latin Bible. Beza says that Knox began to study with such proficiency that it was thought he

Knox did teach in some capacity at the University of St. Andrews in the early 1530s. It was there that Knox met a man named George Wishart - the instrument of Knox's conversion - who later fled to England to avoid persecution of the Catholic rule in Scotland.

Although Knox had already been exposed to the growing wave of Protestantism, his path as a priest had already been defined for him. He left St Andrews and by mid 1530s he had entered the orders of the Catholic church. He served the religious establishment for the next 10 years in Haddington, functioning as a notary (this was a task of churchmen in the middle ages, our word "clerk" comes from cleric) and as a private tutor to the sons of the local gentry, including Hugh Douglas of Longniddry, in East Lothian and John Cockburn of Ormiston: both of with leanings to the new doctrines. By 1540 he had been ordained to the Catholic priesthood, however he did not obtain a parish appointment.

Knox's Conversion
Upon fleeing Scotland, Wishart had travelled to Germany where he became a confirmed protestant. He returned to England, where he had been preaching in Bristol. Then in 1544 - after an extended period of banishment - he returned to Scotland. He became the leading exponent of protestantism and preached the new doctrine in various cities and towns in the lowlands.

By 1545, persecution in Scotland was growing and Wishart was warned by the protestant landowners (lairds) to stop preaching and lie low for a while. Wishart refused, so the lairds decided to keep him safe from the authorities by providing a group of "protectors" who guarded him as he traveled from town to town, entering churches without authority, and preaching to large crowds. In December 1545 John Knox - still a Catholic priest, and employed as a tutor for these lairds sons - joined these 'protectors', carrying with him a large double-edged sword.

Bitterly hostile to Cardinal Beaton - the pro-French Chancellor of Scotland and Archbishop of St. Andrews and great champion of the Catholic cause - Wishart was deeply involved in the intrigues of the Protestant party with Henry VIII of England for the kidnapping or murder of the cardinal, and arranging a marriage between the infant Mary Queens of Scots and Henry VIII young son, Edward

As the danger grew, the group diminished, and Wishart exhorted the rest to leave him and escape danger. Knox did not wish to leave him, asking to stay with him til the end, but Wishart replied, "Nay, return to your home and God bless you. One is sufficient for a sacrifice."

In January 1546 Wishart was arrested by Patrick Hepburn (c. 1512-1556), 3rd Earl of Bothwell, and and taken to St. Andrews, condemned as a heretic and burnt at the stake on 1 March - he was to be the last and most illustrious of the victims of Cardinal Beaton. The martyrdom of Wishart in 1546 was the turning point in the spiritual life of Knox, causing him to renounce Catholicism and to profess his adherence to the Protestant faith. As a known support of Wishart, after his burning, Knox went into hiding.

On 29 May 1546 - in retribution for Wishart's death - a party of sixteen young gentlemen broke into St. Andrews Castle and after killing the sentry at the gate, they stabbed Cardinal Beaton to death. The group insulted his corpse and hung the body over the castle wall for the inhabitants of St. Andrews to see. The group and their Reformer supporters, proceeded to hold the castle against the government, beginning the Protestant revolt in Scotland.

Although he had no hand in the killing, Knox has often been denounced by his critics for his attitude to the death of Beaton. The assassination was approved and applauded by Knox, who describes the deed with a gleeful and mocking levity strangely unbecoming in a Christian preacher, though his panegyrists speak of it merely as his "vein of humour". He describes the murder in his History, concluding with the words "These things we write merrily." A more sober comment of his on the murder was:

"These are the works of God, whereby He would admonish the tyrants of this earth, that in the end He will be revenged of their cruelty, what strength so ever they made in the contrary."

Because of his ties with Wishart, Knox had resolved to leave Scotland, but Cockburn of Ormiston, whose sons John Knox was tutoring, convinced him to enter the castle of St. Andrews as a place of safety, and within a few months of it taking, John Knox - along with his growing band of supporters - joined the group shut up in the castle of St. Andrews. It was in St Andrew's that Knox received a public call to the ministry. His fluency, sarcasm and directness earned him popularity, and he set about denouncing the corruption of the Roman Catholic Church, using the Scriptures as his source. His first sermon is found in his book, “The History of the Reformation in Scotland”. It is at this time, that he became a recognised Minister of the Protestant Church, however there appears to have been no regular ordination.

The Castle was held of nearly 15 months against the regent Arran and the Government. In June 1547 the French fleet summoned by the Scottish Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, and on 31 July, 1547, the besiegers being reinforced by the French and the castle was surrendered. Knox was imprisoned with some others and they were sent away as galley slaves on board the French galleys and at Rouen. His time in captivity strengthen his new faith until his eventual release was not rigorous enough to prevent him from writing a theological treatise, and preaching to his fellow prisoners.

Knox in Exile - England
After nineteen months, in early 1549, he was released - apparently through the intervention of the English government - and rather than return home, he made for England where he was safe from fresh arrest. There the reason for English intervention became more obvious, the Privy Council saw in Knox an opportunity to spread Protestantism and he received a state license to preach at Berwick, where he remained two years. There, in the parish church of St Mary, he attracted crowds of recent Scottish converts crossing the border in secret to listen to him.

In 1552 he was transferred to Newcastle, and appointed a royal chaplain. He preached at least twice before the young king, and as King's Chaplain he took part in the revision of the second English Prayer Book of 1552. But - with his views becoming more radical - he declined the nomination to the Bishopric of Rochester in October 1552 and the offer of All Hallows, in Bread Street, London, in 1553. His own alleged reason for declining these preferments was that he thought the Anglican Church too favourable to Roman doctrine, and that he could not bring himself to kneel at the communion service.

In 1553 Knox became betrothed to Marjorie Bowes - a Berwick woman - daughter of Mrs Elizabeth Bowes and Richard Bowes - captain of Norham Castle, and granddaughter of Sir Ralph Bowes. Knox's relationship with Elizabeth Bowes has been a point of contention for many. Although a devout Catholic, Elizabeth had become increasingly troubled and converted to the new faith, she was first introduced to Knox when she went to listen to him in Berwick in 1549. She had particular difficulty with the Protestant doctrine of predestination, and sent Knox long and mournful letters requesting his advice. The relationship probably remained that of preacher and parishioner, although the tone of Knox's letters throws a definite doubt on that. Whatever the case, it seems that Richard Bowes was not overly perturbed by his wife's friendship with Knox. Elizabeth may have played more the role of mother than mistress to Knox, and she decided that he should find himself a wife. Her choice was her own fifth daughter, Marjorie, an educated girl of 16 or 17. There is no doubt that Knox, an impoverished man of 35, saw this as a golden opportunity, which is probably why her father was reluctant to give his consent. Knox and Marjorie were betrothed but Richard Bowes refused to complete the marriage contract and hand over the dowry, and the marriage was not completed at this time.

Knox in Exile - The Continent
When Edward VI was succeeded in July, 1553, by his Catholic sister Mary, Knox continued his preaching for a time. Knox, who was outspoken in his opposition to Mary's appointment as queen, was persuaded to withdraw from England, and proceeded to the continent, sailing for Dieppe (a port city in northern France), where he arrived in January 1554. He travelled for a time from place to place in some uncertainty, taking refuge for a while in Dieppe. In July 1554 he went from Dieppe to Geneva, partly to consult Calvin and other divines about whether the lawfulness and value of resisting the rule of Mary Tudor in England and Mary of Guise, just appointed Regent, in Scotland; but he got little satisfaction from his advisers.

In the September 1554 while living at Geneva, he accepted - at Calvin's request - the post of chaplain to the English Protestants at the Church of the White Ladies in Frankfort; but his Puritanism revolted against the use of King Edward's prayer-book and of the Anglican ceremonial processions. A huge rift developed between the Protestants who supported the Common Book of Prayer and those who did not, and he was asked by the authorities to leave Frankfort. On March 26, 1555, John Knox resigned the pastorate and returned to Geneva, where he was asked to pastor a refugee English congregation, a considerable number of whom were supporters from the Frankfort congregation. The church in which he preached there (called the Eglise de Notre Dame la Neuve) had been granted, at Calvin's solicitation, for the use of the English and Italian congregations by the municipal authorities. Many historians cite this congregation as the birth of English puritanism.

In August 1555 he was called back to Scotland by the Scottish Protestants who needed a leader to secure the Reformation. He was not keen to go but his soon to be mother-in-law, Mrs Elizabeth Bowes summoned him urgently, causing him to - as he says, "most contrarious to mine own judgement" - set out for Scotland, arriving in Edinburgh in September 1555, then travelling on to Berwick, where he joined his betrothed - Marjorie Bowes - and they married.

The new doctrines had made headway and the Reformation had progressed significantly during his absence. He found converts from all levels of society and was openly able to preach both in public and in the country houses of his supporters among the nobles and gentry. Knox remained in Scotland for nine months preaching Evangelical doctrine in various parts of the country, and persuading those who favored the Reformation to cease from attendance at mass, and to join with himself in the celebration of the Lord's Supper according to a Reformed ritual. His practice was to meet secretly in private homes for communion in the various towns and cities where he preached. At a historic supper, given by his friend Erskine of Dun, it was formally decided that no "believer in the Evangel" could attend Mass; and the external separation of the party from Catholic practice, as well as doctrine, thus became complete.

In early 1856 he wrote a letter - addressed on the advice of two of his noble supporters - to the queen regent, in which he petitioned for toleration for his co-religionists. The letter contained at the same time violent abuse of Catholics and their beliefs, and threatened the regent with "torment and pain everlasting", if she did not act on his counsel. Mary seems to have treated the effusion with silent contempt, which Knox resented bitterly; In May 1556, he was cited to appear before the ecclesiastical hierarchy in Edinburgh, and he boldly responded to the summons, but the bishops found it expedient not to proceed with the trial, but they did later - in his absence - condemn and outlaw him as contumacious, and publicly burnt him in effigy.

In July 1556, an urgent call from his congregation at Geneva, along with the desire to prevent the renewal of persecution in Scotland, caused him to resume his Genevan ministry. Marjory and her mother Elizabeth gave up the lifestyle of a wealthy English family to accompanied Knox to Geneva, where they arrived in September 1856. Elizabeth became his housekeeper managing the household in Geneva and Marjory a loyal and capable wife, acting as Knox's secretary. His two sons were in Geneva, Nathaniel born in 1557 and Eleazar born in 1558.

He was joined there by Mrs. Anne Locke and other supporters from England and Scotland. Anna was some fifteen years younger than Knox, and like Elizabeth, thirsted for Knox's spiritual guidance in the form of long and frequent letters. Again, the language and tone of the letters raise suspicions, but Anna's husband was quite happy to let her travel to the safer Geneva. Knox continued to keep in contact with her from wherever he was throughout the years.

The Protestant nobility tried to get him to return to Scotland in May 1557, on the ground that persecution was diminishing, and he actually got as far as Dieppe, before discovering it was a wasted journey. He stayed in Dieppe for a while, meeting with the Scottish Lords to express his concerns about the ambiguous attitude of the Lords who - motivated by self-interest - had accepted the marriage of the young Mary Stuart to the French Dauphin, François, and the influence of the Duke of Châtelherault.

After ministering to the Dieppe Protestants for three months he went back to Geneva, where he began to write some of his most popular and influential works including hislong and elaborate "Treatise on Predestination" published 1560; the "First Blast Against the Monstrous Rule of Women" - directed against Mary Tudor, Mary of Guise, Catherine de' Medici, and the youthful Mary Stuart, who had just married the French Dauphin - and it during this period he started writing "The History of the Reformation in Scotland".

His writings on the rule of women caused concern with Protestants in Scotland, and Calvin disassociated from the 'First Blast' and banned its sale in Geneva. The tract was published on a few weeks after Elizabeth I succeeded Mary in 1558 and she was infuriated by Knox's insubordination and views against female rulers as a whole.The opinions expressed in the "First Blast" tract include:

"To promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm, nation, or city, is repugnant to nature; contumely [an insult] to God, a thing most contrary to His revealed will and approved ordinance; and .nally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.”

“...a woman promoted to sit in the seat of God (that is, to teach, to judge, or to reign above man) is a monster in nature, contumely to God, and a thing most repugnant to His will and ordinance. For He has deprived them, as before is proved, of speaking in the congregation, and has expressly forbidden them to usurp any kind of authority above man. How then will He suffer them to reign and have empire above realms and nations?”

“...the authority of a woman is a corrupted fountain, and therefore from her can never spring any lawful officer. She is not born to rule over men and therefore from her can never spring any lawe, can appoint none by her gift, nor by her power (which she has not), to the place of a lawful magistrate; and therefore, [those] who receive of a woman office or authority are adulterous and bastard officers before God.”

To many Knox had become an extremist, inciting people to violence against their ruler, and whilst they may have quietly agreed with his views, they were much more reluctant to publically endorse it. Knox remained at his post in Geneva until the end of 1558, imbibing from Calvin all those rigid and autocratic ideas of church discipline which he was subsequently to introduce into Scotland - England would have none of them resulting in a century of unrest, persecution, and civil war.

The Reformist Revolution
In early 1559 Knox received a letter advising him that the Mary of Guise - Queen Regent - was very ill and that the Scottish Protestants were no longer in any danger. He ended his exile in early 1559, when - after the Protestant Elizabeth I ascended the throne of England - he deemed it safe or opportune to leave Geneva for Scotland. He came to Dieppe, and - in response to the "First Blast" tract - Elizabeth refused him safe-conduct through England, travelled by sea from Dieppe to Leith, arriving on 2 May 1559.

Knox found Scotland in a state of turmoil. The Protestant party was growing in power and influence daily and Mary of Guise no longer believed that the Protestants' demands were motivated by genuine religious reasons but rather by a political agenda. She intended to have the dissident preachers outlawed and banished at Stirling. Over the next few months, Knox - not a man who traditionally sought a fight - showed himself full of fight and courage.

From Leith, Knox travelled to Dundee where he found the Protestants Lords were firmly in control. He then moved on to Perth he preached a series of sermons starting on 11 May 1559 which culminated on 25 May in the widespread destruction of the contents of the St Johns Kirk and several of the friaries by a large mob. Knox was jubilant but he later dissociated himself from the damage caused by attributing it to the "rascal multitude".

The Protestants Lords, entrenched in Perth (the only fortified town in Scotland), were now in open rebellion against the regent, who advanced with her troops from Stirling. A conference was held between the two groups which resulted in a treaty, by which the Protestants were to be allowed complete freedom of worship, and no French troops were to be quartered in the town.

Knox meanwhile moved on to St. Andrews, and, in spite of Archbishop Hamilton's threat that if he dared to preach there he should be saluted with "a dozen of culverins, whereof the most part should light upon his nose", he did preach there, and again large mobs sacked the great abbeys, such as Scone and Lindores.

The Protestant congregation next seized Stirling and marched to Edinburgh. Meanwhile the regent meanwhile retreating to Dunbar. Knox accompanied them to the capital, and St. Giles's Church in Edinburgh was the scene of a riot, followed by the flight of the Catholic clergy.

On 7 July 1559 - the same month that Francis II ascended the French throne with Mary, Queen of Scots - Knox was ordained as Minister of St. Giles, Edinburgh, and became the focus of the Scottish Reformation. On the occasion, he wrote to one of his supporters in Geneva

"We meane no tumult, no alteratioun of authoritie but onlie the reformation of religioun, and suppressing of idolatrie."

Knox wrote these words while actually in full revolt against the "authoritie" of the regent of the realm, and a stated desire to prevent the future Mary Queen of Scots from taking the throne.

On 22 July 1559 the regent march upon Edinburgh and the eventually reached terms with the Protestants, one of the articles of the treaty being that the capital was to be free to choose its own religion. The Protestants left preachers in possession of the churches, and retired to Stirling. Mary of Guise again sought French help while the Protestant Lords appealled to Elizabeth I, and to send Knox on a mission to her powerful minister Cecil. Knox had already written to Cecil with a letter for the queen which was more or less an apology for his fiery pamphlet, the "Monstrous Blast". Knox - in a letter to Geneva on 2 September 1559 - describes his role as an envoy of the Protestant Lords, and adds that the church now has ministers permanently appointed to eight of the chief towns in Scotland.

Elizabeth remained wary and unwilling to be seen as openly supporting rebels against their ruler, initially she provided funds and sympathy to Protestants, but after the Earl of Arran changed side, the Protestants seiged Leith - then residence of the Regent, which had been strongly fortified and garrisoned with French troops - and Elizabeth finally sent a fleet to the Firth of Forth; the Protestants, thus reinforced, renewed the siege of Leith, and the regent took refuge in Edinburgh Castle

Mary of Guise had retired to the safety of Edinburgh Castle and was seriously ill with dropsy. This did not stop Knox who continued to preach from St Andrews, alleging that she had gloated at the sight of English corpses hung on the walls of Leith from the windows of Edinburgh Castle said:

After the Revolution
Knox was preaching daily to crowded audiences about the need to formalise the establishment of the Protestant religion, and beginning on 10 July 1560, Parliament passed a series of Acts which would make Scotland an officially Protestant country. A new Confession of Faith, drawn up by Knox and his associates, was adopted word for word; the authority of the pope was abolished; the celebration of Mass was forbidden. The Catholic Church of Scotland was extinct, as far as human power could extinguish it, and the Protestant religion officially established.

The Parliament commissioned Knox and three other ministers to draw up the plan of church-government, known as the "First Book of Discipline". The "First Book of Discipline" (1560) was founded on the code of various Protestant bodies, more especially on the Ordonnances of Geneva and on the formularies of the German Church founded in London in 1550, both very familiar to Knox and both thoroughly Calvinistic in spirit. It outlined the policy, discipline and structure of the new Church in Scotland which was to have Elders, Kirk Sessions, and a General Assembly. Under the Book, several districts of Scotland were to be under the spiritual charge of officials known as superintendents, until such time as ministers were forthcoming for each parish; and there was provision for a comprehensive scheme of national education, elementary, secondary, and university. The Book was formally ratified by the newly constituted "General Assembly" of the Kirk on 20 December, 1560 - Knox was of course the most prominent member - but many of the plans was never carried into effect, nor were the provisions for the diversion of the wealth of the old Church to national purposes any more effectual.

Despite this triumph, the time was also a time of tragedy for the small Knox family. When Knox returned to Scotland, Marjory remained with him through the busiest and most dangerous months of his life. In November 1560, at the very time when his years of labour had began to bear fruit, and he was slowly gaining power as the leader of protestant reform, Marjorie died - at only twenty seven - leaving Knox to cope with two young sons and an increasingly demanding political life.

In December 1560 Francis II King of France had died, and Mary, Queen of Scots, decided to return to Scotland. Knox was relieved when he heard of the Dauphin's death - "husband to our Jezebel", as he called him - but saw the return of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots with great foreboding. The whole situation in Scotland was now changed. The Catholic earls sent Bishop John Lesley to invite the widowed queen to land in the Catholic north; but she distrusted them, not without reason, and confided rather in her Protestant half-brother, Lord James Stewart, who promised that she should be allowed the private celebration of Mass in Scotland. Mary had wanted Knox banished from Scotland or an apology from him, the compromise was that Knox simply pretended that the "First Blast" was written with Mary I in mind and no one else.

The wide-ranging proposals for the Reformed Protestant religion - outlined in the "First Book of Discipline" - were formally passed into Scottish Law by the Parliament on 27 January 1561. Knox turned down the post of superintendent, instead accepting the appointment as minister of the Church of St. Giles, then the main church of Edinburgh. He was given comfortable lodgings in Trunk Close off the High Street, together with the highest salary payable to a minister.

Return of the Queen
Mary, queen of Scots, youthful, widowed, and fair, landed at Leith on 19 August 1561. She was thoroughly predisposed against Knox, while he and the other Reformers looked upon her with grave suspicion, both as a foreigner and as an adamant Papist with designs of re-establishing Catholicism in the realm. Knox's made the following very public observation on her return:

"The very face of heaven the time of her arrival did manifestly speak what comfort was brought unto this country with her, to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety."

and on the following Sunday Mass was said in her chapel at Holyrood. This began a long and often vitriolic conflict with Knox. The celebration of mass was followed by protests and riots, with Knox publicly declaring that

Early in her reign Mary summon Knox to Holyrood for the first of five personal interviews. In this interview Knox railed against the Pope - "that Roman antichrist" - and denounced the Catholic Church as a harlot. Whilst this was the beginning of a number of angry exchanges between Knox and the Queen, Knox found her no mean opponent in argument, and had to acknowledge the acuteness of her mind, if he could not commend the qualities of her heart. His attitude from the very beginning was unyielding and repelling, abrupt, and confrontational, his language and manner harsh and uncourtier-likewere. Over the next few years, Knox the Reformer lived a very busy life. He was much engrossed with the public affairs of the national Church, and at the same time devoted to his work as a parish minister.

During the seven years of Mary's rule, Knox managed to fall out with just about everybody, including Lord James Stuart, Earl of Moray and half-brother of the Queen.These years saw Knox plagued with continual personal and professional controversy and ongoing conflict with the ecclesiastical and political factions of the day, which he regarded as his country's enemies.

In early 1562 he was involved in a public controversy when Abbot Quintin Kennedy, a Benedictine of Crossragual challenged him to a public debate on transubstantiation - the doctrine that in the Mass, or Communion, the bread and wine used are actually changed into the body and blood of Christ - that lasted for three days. Queen Mary, after various failed attempts to win John Knox's favor through flattery and tears, endeavored to get him into her power by moving the privy council to pronounce him guilty of treason based on a circular letter he had written to leading Protestants regarding the trial of two persons indicted for a riot in the Chapel Royal. In this letter, Knox summons the "brethren" from all parts of Scotland to Edinburgh to defend - apparently by violence, if necessary.

Crossragual Abbey

Knox's trial took place at a special meeting of Privy council in December 1562, at which the Queen was present and acted chief prosecutor. Much to Mary's displeasure, Knox was acquitted and absolved from all blame by a majority of the noblemen present - being judged to have done nothing more than his duty in summoning the brethren in time of danger - and he was commended for his judicious defense.

This prosecution saw the new onslaught of sermons against the "Jezebel". These attacks were so venomous that the Lords of the Congregation convened a special meeting in an attempt to tone down Knox's attacks against Mary, but it broke down in disarray with nothing achieved.

In 1564 Mary started having mass said while visiting the West and South-West of Scotland, and a new Knox again preached violently against the Queen, in this he was not alone as Mary’s mass caused many local disturbances.

By 1564 Knox’s views were extreme and in late 1564, the General Assembly publicly censured him for his violence in speech and demeanour against the queen, but Knox retorted with his usual references to Ahab and Jezebel, and maintained that idolaters must "die the death", and that the executioners must be the "people of God". The Lords in vain cited the opinions of Luther, Calvin, Melanchthon, and other Continental Protestants as entirely opposed to Knox's views, and requested him to write and ascertain their judgment on the questions at issue. Knox flatly refused to write to "Mr. Calvin and the learned of other Kirks", and, as he always produced Scriptural texts to back up his opinions, the Lords were silenced if not convinced.

A Second Marriage
In 1563 Knox paid court to Lady Barbara Hamilton, daughter of the Duke of Châtelherault but that suit unsuccessful. After that - in early 1564 - he transferred his attention to Margaret Stewart - the seventeen year old daughter of Andrew Lord Stewart Earl of Ochiltree - where he was more successful.

On 25 March 1564 he remarried, further irritating Mary Queen of Scots. It was not so much the act of taking a second wife that cause outrage, the fact that his second wife was of royal blood being a descendant of the Duke of Albany, younger son of King Robert II, niece of the Duke of Châtelherault, and her sixth cousin. Mary fury at Knox's marraige to a Stewart, was noted in the words of an English ambassador she "Stormeth wonderfully" because Knox's wife , "is of the blood and of the name". The significant difference in rank - with the fact that Margaret was a cousin royal - was only one of

Arms - Lord Ochiltree

He did received a large dowry with the marriage, including the assignment of the farm of Pennymore, or as some say, a bond upon the farm to the value of 800 merks.

There are two interesting commentaries on the marriage, the first is from a History of the Stewarts of Ochiltree:

Downfall of the Queen
In 1565 Knox was again in conflict with the Privy Council in consequence of attacks made from the pulpit on the glittering Renaissance court of Mary where he claimed ‘all men are bewitched’ and on Mary and her young king-consort, Darnley, in their presence, about a month after their marriage. He was formally suspended from preaching, but he seems to have disregarded the prohibition, remarking that if the Church (not the council) commanded him to abstain he would obey "so far as the Word of God would permit"; in other words, he would obey even the Church only so far as he himself thought fit.

Later that year Mary dismissed her Protestant advisers and proceeded to mismanage her own affairs. For a time the Reformed Church was in real danger. The situation in Scotland was now, from the point of view of Knox and his friends, a gloomy one. Moray and the other lords who had protested against Mary's marriage to Darnley were now in exile; all hope of the queen's conversion to Protestantism was at an end; and her Catholic secretary Rizzio was high in her confidence, indeed her chief adviser.

Knox disliked Darnley and hated Riccio. On 9 March, 1566 Rizzio was murdered in front of the Queen. Whether Knox was privy to the murder of Rizzoi is unknown, but it is known by his own statement that "the act was most just and worthy of all praise" that he openly approved of the act. His approval drew suspiscion, and he thought it best at this juncture to leave Edinburgh for a time and retired to his friends in Ayrshire for several months to avoid prosecution. During this time he busied himself completing and publishing his "History of the Reformation in Scotland". The book had taken him seven years to write, and though it was sometimes rough and even coarse in language, it was written with a force and vigor not surpassed by any of his other writings, of all which it may be said that whatever their faults, they are works of true genius, and well worthy in their character of the great leader and statesman who wrote them.

After the birth of Mary's son in 1566, Knox returned to Edinburgh and then several months later in December 1566 he received a six month leave of absence from the General Assembly of Scotland. During this time he went to England to visit his sons.

In doing so, he was not a witness of the murder of Darnley on 10 February 1567, the abduction of Mary by Bothwell, and her marriage to him on 15 May, 1567. The queen was already - after the disaster of Carberry Hill - a prisoner at Lochleven, when Knox returned to Edinburgh on 15 June 1567. He lost no time in demanding that Mary be put to death for her sins. Even after Mary's forced abdication, Knox continued to preach against her five times a week. On 29 July 1567 Knox went to Stirling to preach at the coronation of the young king, James VI, when he protested against the rite of unction as a relic of popery.

The appointment of Knox's friend, James Stewart, the Earl of Moray, to the regency brought Knox hope, he was again into close association with the crown, and the Reformed church would have a power patron. However he never regained his former prominence in the country. Knox was haunted by the prospect of Mary's restoration. Her escape from Lochleven apeared to justify his worst fears. Even fortnight later after Mary's defeat at Langside and flight to England, Knox remained paranoid and preached against the potential of a French alliance and restoration of the Queen

The murder of Moray in January 1569 was an enormous blow to Knox. He preached the Regent's funeral sermon in St. Giles's Church and, according to one of his admirers, "moved three thousand persons to shed tears for the loss of such a good and godlie governor".

It appears that the shock of Moray's death compounded the health problems he suffers as result of his time on the french galleys, and he was struck by apoplexy in the late 1569, and never entirely recovered and nearly a year later, in the late 1570, he suffered a paralytic stroke - from which he recovered.

His illness did not dull his sermons, and he continued to preach in his church in Edinburgh, demanding Mary's death. With Moray's death Edinburgh was plunged into disarray, and by 1571, Edinburgh was a battleground between the factions, with a struggle ensued between those for and those against Protestantism. Knox was heavily involved in this turmoil.

His calls for Mary's death rendering him unpopular with the more moderate Protestants and with the nobles - Protestant as well as Catholic - many of whom were his own former friends and were now lobbying for the queen's restoration. Knox was no longer at home or at ease in the capital and the final blow was when a former friend of his - Kirkcaldy of Grange - switched over to the Queen's party and issued - on 30 April 1571 - a proclamation ordering all supporters of the King's party to leave Edinburgh within six hours. Knox refused at first but was finally persuaded to go in May 1571, retiring to St Andrews with his secretary Richard Bannatyne and his family.

Knox remained in St Andrews for fifteen months, continuing to write, and preaching occasionally - notwithstanding his infirmities - with his old fire and vehemence. In St Andrews, he went on ranting and raving from the pulpit despite his old age and ill health, attracting both admiration and dislike from the academic community.

On 31 July 1572, the King and the Queen's parties signed a truce, and in August, 1572, Mary's allys left Edinburgh. Knox was persuaded to return to Edinburgh, where he resumed his preaching and lecturing from St Giles Cathedral. The news of the massacre of St. Bartholomew had just reached Scotland, and Knox thundered from his pulpit (to which he had almost to be carried), in the presence of the French ambassador, denunciations of "that cruel murderer and false traitor, the King of France". On 9 November he took part in the induction-services of Mr. Lawson as minister of St. Giles's in his place and several days later he contracted pneumonia. One account of his death states that "all the noblest and best men of Scotland hung about his house for tidings of the progress of his malady, in the vain hope of his being longer spared", but this was not the case, and he died some fifteen days after his last service, on Monday 24 November 1572 at his home in Trunk Close Edinburgh. He was about sixty seven at the time.

One estimation of his character is found in the account of his last illness and death by his servant, Richard Ballantyne, who, after detailing the incidents of his last hours, says,

J.K.
1572
Beneath that spot over which now trundles the commerce of a great city, were once laid the remains of him who "never feared the face of man"

Knox was survived by his widow, two sons of his first marriage and three daughters by his second wife. In accordance with the terms of her dowry, Knox left by will to his wife the sum of 800 merks.

Margaret later remarried to Sir Andrew Ker, the Knight of Fawdonside, but she had no other children. Of Knox children, both of his sons died childless - Nathanael, at Cambridge in 1580 and Eleazer who became vicar of Clacton Magna in the archdeaconry of Colchester in 1591 - whilst of his three daughters, the line of the eldest two - Martha and Margaret - are extinguished, however the youngest daughter - Elizabeth - married the famous John Welsh, minister of Ayr, and descendents of this line still exist.

Knox the Man
Although he lived to see the Protestant religion established in Scotland, Knox's vision of a reformed society was not carried through. The nobility who supported the revolution on 1560 beleived that the Protestant Church should be subordinate to the Monarchy and to Parliment. They refused to endorse Knox's "First Book of Disipline", Knox regarded this as Hypocrisy and as a treacherous deflection from Christ. Two thirds of the Catholic Church's wealth was retained by the former Clergy and the nobility and the remaining third was devided between he Queen and the New Church. Knox described the settlement as " two parts freely given to the Devil and the third between God and the Devil."

Interestingly for a man renown for carrying a two sided sword and advocacy of rebellion, Knox is not a man known for his courage, on more than one occasion he displayed a timidity or shrinking from danger scarcely to have been expected from one who boasted of his willingness to suffer death in his master's cause. On his own showing he was courageous enough in his personal encounters with his unfortunate queen; but, according to another of his Protestant biographers:

Despite his ecclesiastical commitments and strict demeanor Knox lived a full and varied life many social and family enjoyments. He was quite a wealthy man, with a fair stipend of four hundred merks scots, equal to about forty four pounds of English money of that day - a higher salary than the judges of the Court of Session in Scotland and an equivalent salary to that of the English judges of the same times. He had a good house - provided and kept in repair by the municipality - that was previously occupied by the abbot of Dunfermline. The house is still preserved, with little change, and forms a the only memorial of the great reformer in the scene of so many of his labors. It is to his credit that despite this relative affluence Knox lived in the manner he preached, never enriching himself with the spoils of the Church and denying the material things in life - a trait in which he contrasts singularly with the Protestant lords and lairds who were his friends and adherents. From his will, too, it appears that he had sometimes as much as a hogshead of wine in his cellar. Nor was he, with all his severity and even fierceness of temper, a man indisposed in those days to exchange friendly and kindly relations with his neighbors, many of whom, in every rank, were among his intimate friends, or to give way, when the occasion fitted (perhaps even sometimes when it did not fit), to mirth and humor, of which, as of other traits of his character, his writings furnish abundant evidence.

Knox's House

Of his ability and his power of influencing those among whom he lived and laboured, there is no room to doubt. His gifts as a speaker and a preacher and of his command of his native tongue was remarkable. The best-known likeness of Knox is the woodcut of him in Beza's "Icones", published at Geneva in 1580. The so-called Somerville portrait, maintained by Carlyle to be the only authentic likeness of Knox, apparently represents a divine of the seventeenth century. An interesting description of Knox's appearance, and especially of his style as a preacher, in his later years, is furnished in the Diary of James Melville (Bannatyne Club, 1829, pp. 26, 33). Melville was at the time a student in St. Andrews, and the period he refers to is the year 1571, when Knox, for his per-sonal security, had, not for the first time in his life, taken refuge in that city. Melville writes