John Knox

John Knox (c. 1514–1572) was the principal architect of the Scottish Reformation and the founding figure of Scottish Presbyterianism. Ordained a Catholic priest, he converted to Reformed Protestantism under the influence of George Wishart and went on to serve as a galley slave of the French after the fall of St Andrews Castle in 1547. His years of exile — first briefly in Frankfurt, then in Geneva, where he was profoundly shaped by John Calvin — forged his uncompromising Calvinist theology, which he applied on his return to Scotland to dismantle the Catholic establishment and establish a Reformed church governed by presbyteries. His History of the Reformation in Scotland remains an indispensable, if polemical, primary source for the religious upheavals of sixteenth-century Scotland, and his First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women famously antagonised Queen Elizabeth I. Knox's legacy endured through the Church of Scotland and the global Presbyterian tradition that traces its polity directly to his work.