John Knox - The Thunderer
- GOLS
- Oct 26
- 3 min read
John Knox was the driving force of the Scottish Reformation. A fiery preacher, bold reformer, and staunch defender of Scripture, Knox reshaped Scotland’s religious and political life, laying the foundations of the Presbyterian Church.
Knox was born around 1513 or 1514 in the royal burgh of Haddington, East Lothian. In his childhood, the Reformation was already stirring across Europe. He received his early education at St. Mary’s Collegiate Church grammar school, where he studied Latin, rhetoric, logic, and catechism. He likely went on to St Andrews University, immersing himself in the classical trivium and quadrivium, and by 1540 served as a notary-apostolic, drafting legal documents for the Church. Though trained for clerical life, Knox’s convictions were beginning to diverge from Catholic teaching.
It was George Wishart, Scotland’s martyred preacher, who drew Knox fully into the Reformation. Knox became Wishart’s companion and bodyguard, famously carrying a sword to protect him. After Wishart’s martyrdom in 1546, Knox’s preaching and teaching work deepened, taking him from the lairdly households of St Andrews into public ministry. His first sermon from Daniel 7 marked the start of a lifelong mission to proclaim the supremacy of Scripture. He preached boldly against idolatry and the corruptions of Rome, establishing himself as one of Scotland’s leading Reformers.
In 1547 the French besieged St Andrews Castle on behalf of Mary of Guise. Knox and others were captured and condemned to the galleys as slaves. For 19 months he endured brutal conditions at the oar, refusing even when forced to venerate a statue of the Virgin. Freed in 1549 through English intervention, Knox moved south and ministered under the Protestant king Edward VI. There he influenced the revision of the Book of Common Prayer, preached at Berwick and Newcastle, and even in the royal court, but refused all offers of a bishopric, convinced that episcopacy was unbiblical.
When Edward died in 1553 and Mary Tudor restored Catholic rule, Knox fled to the Continent. He found refuge in Geneva, where under John Calvin he absorbed the full weight of Reformed theology and discipline. He helped shape worship for English exiles there, publishing The Forme of Prayers, and in 1558 wrote his notorious pamphlet The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women—a polemic that strained relations with Elizabeth I of England but underlined his conviction that rulers too were subject to God’s Word.
By 1559 Scotland itself was in open revolt against Catholic authority. Knox returned, preaching across Perth, Dundee, Stirling, St Andrews, and Edinburgh. His sermons sparked iconoclasm—statues smashed, altars overturned, monasteries emptied. He proclaimed the Scriptures as supreme, denounced the Mass as idolatry, and urged Scotland to be cleansed by the Word of God. When Mary of Guise brought in French troops, the Protestant lords forged an alliance with England through the Treaty of Berwick. Elizabeth sent an army, and after the siege of Leith and the death of Mary of Guise in June 1560, the Treaty of Edinburgh secured Scotland’s independence from French influence and opened the way for Reformation.
In August that same year, Knox and five fellow Reformers drafted the Scots Confession in just six days. Parliament approved it, and the foundations of the Reformed Kirk of Scotland were laid. Knox also co-authored the Book of Discipline, setting out Presbyterian church government, though it was never fully ratified.
For the rest of his life Knox preached at St Giles’ in Edinburgh, often in direct conflict with Mary, Queen of Scots. He thundered against her Masses and warned her that she too was accountable to God’s Word. Stroke-weakened but unbowed, Knox preached his final sermon on 9 November 1572 and died shortly after, on 24 November.
John Knox left Scotland with a national Reformed Church, Presbyterian in structure and deeply rooted in Scripture. He helped draft confessions, shape worship, and inspire generations of Protestants at home and abroad. His fearless preaching and unshakable conviction that Christ alone is head of the Church earned him a reputation as both a prophet and a “thunderer”—a man who, in his own words, “feared the face of no man.”
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