Knox, John

John (1505-1572), a Scottish reformer. He bears somewhat the same relation to the church of Scotland that Luther sustains to the Lutheran Church of Germany. He was born in Haddington, near Edinburgh. He was educated at his native town and at the University of Glasgow, but did not take a degree. For so prominent a man, the details of his life are strangely unknown. He appears to have entered the Catholic priesthood about 1530. In 1546 George Wishart, a Montrose schoolmaster, who persisted in preaching the doctrine of the Reformation, was burned at the stake at St. Andrews by order of Cardinal Beaton. This appears to have determined Knox to join the Reformers, at that time a decidedly dangerous step. He received an invitation to preach to the scattered congregations of Protestants. Cardinal Beaton was assassinated. Civil war broke out. Knox took refuge with Protestant friends in the castle of St. Andrews. The French fleet, cooperating with the Catholics of Scotland, besieged the fortress and took it. Knox, with others, was taken prisoner. He was required, like a galley slave, to labor at a French oar for about eighteen months, when his release was procured at England's intercession. He then went to London. He remained in England during the reign of Edward VI, preaching to Protestant congregations. At the death of Edward and the beginning of persecutions under his successor, Queen Mary, Knox fled to the continent. He became pastor of an English congregation at Geneva. When the Protestant party got the upper hand in Scotland he returned home. When unable to preach in one place he went to another. He traveled throughout the length and breadth of southern Scotland, calling on the congregations to remove the pictures and paintings from the churches and to tear down the monasteries. He was for many years the minister of St. Giles, the principal parish in Edinburgh.

He came into direct conflict with Mary, Queen of Scots, who was an ardent Catholic. He despised her pretty, graceful, treacherous ways. She wept at his rough, unmannerly bearing. He was called before the privy council more than once, charged with treasonable utterances, but, the majority of the council being Protestants, he escaped with his life. The further details of his life, his contentious spirit, his thunderings from the pulpit, and the broadside of controversial pamphlets sent out by him cannot be entered into here,--perhaps they are no longer profitable. One of his last public sermons was a denunciation of the French king for permitting the massacre of St. Bartholomew. He was a stern and rigid partisan and a vehement speaker, but not a logical thinker.

He was buried in the churchyard of St. Giles. When his body was laid at rest the Earl of Morton, regent of the kingdom, remarked "Here lieth a man who, in his life, never feared the face of man, who hath been often threatened with the dagger, but yet hath ended his days in peace and honor." His resting place appears never to have been marked securely. The old burying ground has been effaced to permit the erection of new buildings. The exact place of his grave is therefore unknown. He had five children, but it is believed that there are now no descendents. There is not even an authentic portrait of the great preacher.

See Edinburgh; Presbyterian

Knute or Canute, ka-nut' (995-1035), king of England, Denmark, and Norway. Without going through the details of his reign, it is sufficient to say that he is one of the great figures in Scandinavian history. He was the first Danish king of England. At his death the three kingdoms were divided between his three sons. Accounts, no doubt largely traditional, describe him as a man of commanding appearance and large views, disposed to maintain the rights of the common people. He encouraged the spread of Christianity throughout his vast dominions. His courtiers having endeavored to flatter him, as did those of Alexander the Great, with a notion that he was divine, he ordered his throne to be placed on the seashore at a low tide. As the tide rose he ordered the waters to go back nor dare to wet his feet,--the feet of him who was lord of the land and of the ocean. The water continuing to rise he turned rebukingly to his flatterers saying, "Let all men know how empty and worthless is the power of kings; for there is none worthy of the name but Him whom heaven, earth, and sea obey."