John Knox

Life and work

Knox was ordained a Catholic priest but converted to Protestantism in the 1540s under the influence of reformers including George Wishart. Captured by French forces after the fall of the Protestant-held St. Andrews Castle in 1547, Knox spent nineteen months as a galley slave, an ordeal that hardened his convictions.

After release, Knox spent time in England and, following Mary I's restoration of Catholicism there, fled to Geneva, where he came under Calvin's influence and called the city "the most perfect school of Christ since the days of the Apostles." While in exile he wrote The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, a polemic against female rule aimed at Catholic queens, which later embarrassed him when Protestant Elizabeth I came to the English throne.

Knox returned to Scotland in 1559 and became the driving force of the Scottish Reformation, helping draft the Scots Confession and the First Book of Discipline, which established a Presbyterian system of church government — governed by elected elders rather than bishops — that became the foundation of the Church of Scotland.

Knox repeatedly clashed directly and dramatically with the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots, in a series of famous confrontations, contributing to the political and religious turmoil that eventually led to her deposition.

In their own words

"Give me Scotland, or I die."attributed prayer

Further reading

• Encyclopedia Britannica: John Knox