Who was John Knox? | Reformation History

in the 1540s a scottish man bravely preached the protestant cause in a kingdom that was entirely catholic and seeing the chaos that had happened down south with the church of england scotland's monarchy didn't really want a bar of protestantism at all but one man persistently preached the protestant cause even predicting his own death by the hands of the government john knox was that man's bodyguard you see the preacher's name was actually george wishart and because it was dangerous to be idol in scotland wished preached on tour traveling with an entourage of 50 fellow protestants one of which was the focus of today's video john knox and in 1546 knox said his farewell to wish it and wish it surrendered himself to the authorities scotland's big figure of catholic authority cardinal beaton brutally had wishart strangled and burned for his protestant heresy the fuse had been lit and the ideological war for scotland had begun hello there okay so like i said today's video will focus on john knox but he's a bit of a side character in the early days of the scottish reformation and just for a bit of context knox was a proper scotsman i mean think about it this way if the reformers were school students then luther would be the defined student who always argues back with the teacher calvin and cranmer would have been the nerds but knox would be that kid that secretly does mma training and so he'd be the kid that everyone knows not to mess with in his early days i guess you could describe him as a bit of a theological thumb now after executing wish it beaten himself was murdered in may of 1546 basically a gang of five angry protestants stormed the castle of saint andrews and claimed the castle and so the assassins took refuge in the castle itself and they brought their friends and family in two so that 150 people were occupying it now a lot of this gang was the same gang that traveled around with wishart and really think of the storming of sinai's as a retaliation move from one gang the protestants to another gang of the catholics and so with the protestants occupying the castle for nearly a year knox decided that he'd join his old boys where he became a preacher to the castle occupants now knox preached on daniel 7 and he compared the pope to the antichrist and so the scottish queen queen mary had to act now this is going to get really confusing we're going to see two queen mary's this episode neither of which are bloody mary who was the queen who executed many protestants in england as we saw in a previous video the first quaint was mary of geese who was ruling scotland while waiting for the actual queen her daughter five-year-old mary queen of scots to grow up basically mary of geese had married king james the fifth of scotland but james died six days after his daughter's birth and mary of geese was a french noble prior to marrying james and was a swans catholic and so she decided to call in her french bodies to help save the castle and deal with this protestant issue the gang decided to surrender the castle and john knox was forced to row in the french galleys basically using slave labor to transport ships now the conditions were brutal on board they were stars but had little hygienic standards and knox even recounted that they were forcing slaves to kiss a painting of the virgin mary and that he threw it into the sea as an act of defiance eventually he was released in 1549 we don't know why and he took refuge in england and it's important to note that though protestant england wasn't anywhere near as radical as the scottish protestants like knox cranmer was only just writing his first book of common prayer which still had people kneeling to take the mass and so knox had to follow this prayer book when leading english services it was too conservative for his liking but as a refugee what exactly was he going to do but then fast forward 5 years to 1554 and bloody mary takes over as the queen of england again our third mary for the episode and seeing where the tide was going for the protestants in england knox fled to the continent before he could be killed by mary and while on the continent knox went to visit his role model john calvin in geneva he then left a pastor a church of english refugees in frankfurt and then went back to geneva for a few more years where in 1558 he wrote his most famous piece of writing on the monstrous regiment of women basically in this book knox argued that women shouldn't be political leaders calvin actually critiqued his friend and said well what about deborah in the old testament but knox replied by saying that god used her as judgment against israel now in fairness to knox monstrous meant alien rather than terrible and you can understand his bitterness having seen many of his friends die at the hands of bloody mary in england but it was unfortunately published at the worst possible time bloody mary who i'm calling by her colloquial name to avoid confusion had just died in england and was replaced with her younger sister elizabeth now elizabeth was sympathetic towards protestants and let all the english refugees in frankfurt come back home however knox was denied entry because he went on record saying that women shouldn't be rulers and because he was something of a public intellectual this threatened elizabeth reign so knox decided that if he couldn't go back to england he'd venture back home to the motherland scotland but knox had actually been gone for so long that mary queen of scots had grown up turned 18 and now was back coming to scotland to rule the throne mary had grown up in france away from the action like knox and when she came back the scottish nobility was completely divided between protestant and catholic she herself was a catholic but she may as well have been a foreigner entering the situation and so knox joined the protestant faction straight away helping to write the scots confession that parliament eventually passed for churches to use now obviously this annoyed young mary and it was the beginning of a tense relationship between the queen and knox in fact on one occasion in 1563 knox brought mary to tears by publicly criticizing her marriage to prince don carlos of spain and he said that he'd rather endure her tears than remain silent and betray his commonwealth now mary met her end when she abdicated from the throne and fled from edinburgh however after fleeing from edinburgh mary claimed that she'd abdicated under the threat of death from her protestant half-brother james stewart and she amassed an army of 6 000 to fight back against the earth she lost the battle and then fled south to england where she was actually taken and imprisoned by queen elizabeth but this is a whole other special that i might do later on and so some different regions led as mary's son james vi grew up and the earl of lennox matthew stewart actually removed many protestants but he did allow knox to stay because they were once gallows slaves together and so then remaining in edinburgh knox died in his home in 1572 aged 58 now his main legacy was less in the theology he taught about god but more his ideas about how churches should be governed although he preached many fiery sermons his main legacy was making scotland go presbyterian rather than anglican now knox had a great love for his anglican brothers but he didn't believe in the hierarchical structure of the church of england with a minister answering to a bishop who then answers to an archbishop instead he was a fan of church's appointing elders now ruling elders were your everyday folk who made sure the people were represented in church government and teaching elders were ordained ministers who were responsible for what was taught at church this collection of elders was called a presbytery and presbyteries would then meet together to make decisions for an area rather than having someone like an archbishop give top down instruction and so with the church of scotland having a more democratic flavor people started to wonder that if churches could be democratic could governments also become democratic too thanks for watching that is actually the end of the reformation series obviously there's loads more to the reformation that hasn't been covered in this 11 part series but my expertise is more with the first generation of performers then the second tuning in two weeks time though because we've got the start of our new series coming and i'm really excited for it we are going to begin enemies of the west thanks for watching we'll see you next time for our next venture into a fascinating part of history and we look forward to seeing you then