John Knox

John Knox (1505, 1513 or 1514 – 1572) was a Scottish religious reformer who played the lead part in reforming the Church in Scotland in a Presbyterian manner. He died in Edinburgh on November 24, 1572.

Confinement in the French galleys

At this time he was residing in the castle of St. Andrews. After Beaton's death, this stronghold became a place of refuge for many of the Protestants. Along with his pupils, the sons of the lairds of Longniddry and Ormiston, already mentioned, Knox passed there some comparatively peaceful months. His repose was rudely interrupted by the investiture and capitulation of the castle in the end of July, 1547, succeeded, as regarded Knox and some of the rest of the refugees, by confinement in the French galleys.

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He spent eighteen months as a galley-slave, amid hardships and miseries which are said to have permanently injured his health.

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"How long I continued prisoner," he said at St. Andrews, in 1559, "what torments I sustained in the galleys, and what were the sobs of my heart, is now no time to recite." He adds, however, that he always continued to hope for a return to his native country. In the History (vol, i., p. 228), the same confidence of a return is referred to as never having forsaken him; and he gives a curious testimony to the fact by mentioning how, on one occasion, "lying betwixt Dundee and St. Andrews, the second time that the galleys returned to Scotland, the said John being so extremely sick that few hoped his life, Maister James willed him to look to the land, and asked if he knew it.

Related Topics:
1559 - Dundee

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He answered,

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:Yea, I know it well; for I see the steeple of that place where God first in public opened my mouth to glory; and I am fully persuaded, how weak soever I now appear, that I shall not depart this life, till that my tongue shall glorify his godly name in the same place.

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Knox was asked to kiss the feet of an idol, and he said, "Trouble me not; for such an idol is acursed; and therefore I will

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not touch it." At this reply, they told him to to hold it also. Knox, now angry picked it up and said, "Let our lady now save herself; for she is light enough; let her learn to swim."

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On his release, which took place early in 1549, through the intervention, apparently, of the English government, Knox found that, in the existing state of the country, he could be of little use in his beloved Scotland. For nearly ten years, accordingly, he submitted to voluntary exile, like many of the worthiest of his countrymen in those troublous times. All those years, however, he devoted himself to ministerial labors in connection with the Reformed Church. His first sphere of duty was provided for him in England, for the space of about five years as a minister of the English Church.

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It is to be remembered that, during the whole reign of Edward VI., the Church of England was in a transition state; some of its most marked peculiarities (to which Knox himself and others in Scotland and abroad afterward objected) were then in abeyance, or at least not insisted upon as terms of communion. Thus the use of the prayer-book was not enforced, neither was kneeling at the communion. Episcopal government was of course acknowledged; but Knox held his commission, as a Reformed preacher, directly from the privy council, and was virtually independent of diocesan jurisdiction. Moreover, he seems to have had no strong objection to episcopacy itself, although he disapproved of "your proud prelates' great dominions and charge, impossible by one man to be discharged;" and on this, along with other grounds, he declined the bishopric of Rochester in 1552.

Related Topics:
Edward VI - Church of England - Abeyance - Episcopal - 1552

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The offices he held in the Church of England are briefly indicated in the History, which says, "He was first appointed preacher to Berwick, then to Newcastle; and last he was called to London and to the southern parts of England, where he remained till the death of King Edward VI of England" (Works,i., p. 280).

Related Topics:
Berwick - London - Edward VI of England

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From other sources it appears that in 1551 he was appointed one of the six chaplains in ordinary to the king; and in this capacity there was submitted to him, and, after revisal, he joined the other chaplains in sanctioning, The Articles concerning an Uniformity in Religion of 1552, which became the basis of the Thirty-nine Articles (q. v.) of the Church of England.

Related Topics:
1551 - 1552 - Thirty-nine Articles - Church of England

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