SEEALSO: Brahe, Tycho; Copernicus, Nico-
laus; Galilei, Galileo
Knox, John .....................................
(1514–1572)
Church reformer, preacher, author, and
founder of the Presbyterian Church of
Scotland. Born in Haddington, Knox was
ordained a priest in the Catholic Church
in 1536, and worked as a notary and tutor
to the noble families of Lothian. By 1545
he had converted to the cause of the re-
formed church under the influence of
George Wishart. Despite the founding of
the Protestant Church of England,
Scotland’s rulers remained resolutely
Catholic, and in 1546, Wishart was ar-
rested for his teachings and burned at the
stake. When his Protestant followers
avenged themselves by killing a Catholic
cardinal, Knox joined them at Saint An-
drews Castle, where he rallied the besieged
reformers with his fiery sermons and his
polemics against the evils of the Catholic
Church. The group took refuge from Scot-
tish and French soldiers but was finally
overwhelmed in 1547. Knox was sentenced
to a term of service in the French navy as
a galley slave.
In 1549, after his release, Knox re-
turned to England, where he served as one
of the king’s chaplains. Unwilling to accept
an appointment as a bishop in the Church
of England, Knox was unwilling to temper
his scathing denunciations of his religious
enemies. His stand made him a wanted
man on the accession of the very Catholic
queen Mary in 1553. He escaped to Eu-
rope, joining John Calvin in Geneva and
preaching Calvinist reforms and govern-
ment in the German city of Frankfurt,
which expelled him in 1555. Knox did not
improve his standing with the queen of
England with his pamphletFirst Blast of
the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regi-
ment of Women, which denounced Queen
Mary as well as the Catholic Mary of
Guise, who ruled Scotland as a regent. The
pamphlet ridiculed the notion of women
holding political power, and so enraged
Mary’s Protestant successor Elizabeth I that
she prohibited him from ever setting foot
in England.
In 1559 Knox was invited back to Scot-
land to lead Protestants rebelling against
the authority of Mary of Guise. Knox and
his allies forced French troops out of Scot-
land and defeated the Catholic Church.
The new Presbyterian Church was estab-
lished, in which each congregation elected
its parish leaders, and by an act of the
Scottish parliament in 1560 Scotland offi-
cially threw off the authority of the Catho-
lic pope. Knox was also author ofHistoryJohn Knox. ARCHIVEPHOTOS, 530 W. 25TH
STREET,NEWYORK, NY 10001.
Knox, John