Who Was John Knox? The Scottish Reformer's Life and Message

Biography Church History Preaching

John Knox was the leader of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland. He was born around 1514 and died in Edinburgh in 1572. In between he was a Catholic priest, a convert, a galley slave in the French fleet, a preacher in England, a refugee pastor in Geneva, and finally the minister of St. Giles' Church in Edinburgh, where he preached to a nation that had turned Protestant almost in a single year. He is remembered for his fearless preaching, for his face-to-face arguments with Mary Queen of Scots, and for the Church of Scotland that grew from his work.

Here's the story of his life, what he preached, and where to start reading him.

Early life and conversion

Knox was born in or near Haddington, a market town east of Edinburgh. The exact year isn't certain; most historians put it about 1514. He was educated for the church, ordained a priest, and worked for some years as a notary and as a tutor to the sons of local gentry.

In those years Scotland was still firmly Roman Catholic, but Protestant ideas were spreading. Knox tells the story in his own History of the Reformation. In 1528 a young nobleman named Patrick Hamilton, who had studied among the Reformers in Germany, was burned at St. Andrews for preaching the new doctrine. Knox says the burning did the bishops no good, because people all over Scotland began asking why he had died:

Thair was none found who begane not to inquyre, Whairfoir was Maistir Patrik Hammyltoun brunt?
The Works of John Knox, Volume 1, Book First of the History

The man who won Knox was George Wishart, a Protestant preacher who toured Scotland in the mid-1540s. Knox became his companion and bodyguard. Wishart was arrested and burned at St. Andrews in 1546, and a few months later a band of Protestant nobles killed Cardinal Beaton, who had condemned him, and seized St. Andrews Castle.

The call to preach and the galleys

In 1547 Knox took refuge in the castle with his young pupils. The Protestants there asked him to become their preacher. He refused, saying he had no call. So the preacher John Rough charged him publicly, in front of the whole congregation, not to refuse "this holy vocatioun." Knox's own History says he was overcome and withdrew to his room in tears. Then he took up the work, and his first sermon, on Daniel 7, set out the case against the papacy.

A few months later a French fleet took the castle. Knox was chained to an oar as a galley slave for about nineteen months. Even there, his History says, he kept telling his companions that God would set them free "to his glorie, evin in this lyef."

England and Geneva

Released in 1549, Knox went to England, where the boy king Edward VI favored the Reformation. He preached at Berwick and Newcastle and became one of the king's chaplains. When the Catholic Mary Tudor came to the throne in 1553, he fled to the Continent.

He spent most of the next five years in Geneva, and he called the city "the most perfect school of Christ" since the apostles. He pastored the congregation of English refugees there. He married Marjory Bowes, an Englishwoman, in these years, and he made one long preaching visit to Scotland in 1555 and 1556.

From Geneva he wrote his tracts to the persecuted Protestants of England and Scotland. His Admonition to England comforted them with Christ's words to His frightened disciples, "It is I, be not afraid." In 1558 he published, without his name, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women. ("Regiment" meant "rule.") It argued that rule by a woman was against nature and Scripture. It was aimed at the Catholic queens persecuting Protestants, Mary Tudor above all, but it came out just before the Protestant Elizabeth took the English throne, and she never forgave him for it.

The Reformation in Scotland

In May 1559 Knox came home for good. His preaching at Perth set off the first riots against the monasteries, and the Protestant nobles, called the Lords of the Congregation, took up arms against the French-backed regent, Mary of Guise. With English help they won. In August 1560 the Scottish Parliament broke with Rome, abolished the Mass and adopted a Protestant confession of faith that Knox helped write.

The same year Knox and five other ministers drew up the First Book of Discipline, a plan for the new church. It called for the gospel to be preached in every parish, a school in every town, colleges for the universities, and care for the poor from the old church's wealth:

Seeing that Christ Jesus is he quhom God the Father hes commandit onlie to be herd, and followed of his scheip, we urge it necessarie, that his Evangell be trewlie and openlie preached in everie Kirk and Assemblie of this Realme
The Works of John Knox, Volume 2, The Book of Discipline

The nobles took much of the church's wealth for themselves, and many of the plans went unfulfilled. But the vision of a preaching church and a schooled people shaped Scotland for centuries.

Knox and Mary Queen of Scots

In 1561 the young Catholic queen, Mary Stuart, came home from France. Knox was now minister of St. Giles' in Edinburgh. When Mary had Mass said in her chapel, he preached against it, and she summoned him to answer. Their conversations, which Knox records in his History, are some of the most famous scenes in Scottish history. When she accused him of teaching her people to resist their princes, he answered that true religion comes from God, not from kings:

So are not subjectis bound to frame thair Religioun according to the appetites of thair Princes.
The Works of John Knox, Volume 2, Book Fourth of the History

In another interview Mary broke into tears. Knox told her he took no pleasure in anyone's weeping, but that he would rather bear her tears than hurt his conscience by keeping silent.

Last years

Marjory Bowes died in 1560, leaving him with two young sons. In 1564 he married Margaret Stewart. Mary's reign ended in disaster, and she was forced to abdicate in 1567. Knox preached at the coronation of her infant son, James VI. Worn out and partly paralyzed by a stroke, he preached his last sermons in St. Giles' in 1572 and died on November 24 of that year. At his burial the regent, the Earl of Morton, is reported to have said that there lay a man who never feared the face of man.

What he preached

Knox was a preacher first. He believed the Word of God, truly preached, was the power that would reform the church and the nation. His sermons are full of the Old Testament prophets, and he applied them directly to Scotland. He was stern against idolatry and against rulers who opposed God. But he was also tender toward the persecuted church. In his sermon on Isaiah 26, preached in 1565 with the king himself in the congregation, he said:

In our God there is wisdom and power, in a moment to change the joy and mirth of our enemies into everlasting mourning, and our sorrows into joy and gladness that shall have no end.
The Pulpit of the Reformation, A Sermon On Isaiah XXVI. By John Knox

Where to start

TheWay Library has four books by Knox, all free to read. Start with The Pulpit of the Reformation, which has his sermon on Isaiah 26 and a short passage from his Admonition to England, in modern spelling, beside sermons by Hugh Latimer and John Welch. Then try his History in The Works of John Knox, Volume 1 and Volume 2. They're in old Scots spelling, which takes patience, but reading them aloud helps. The First Blast of the Trumpet is there for anyone who wants to read the famous tract for themselves. For a modern-English portrait, read James Stalker's John Knox: His Ideas and Ideals.

Our guide to John Knox's books explains what each volume really holds, and our collection of John Knox quotes gathers his best lines. You'll find all his books on the John Knox author page.