John Knox (Renaissance and Reformation)

Introduction

Although historians are sharply divided over the exact extent and nature of his leadership of the early Scottish Protestant Kirk, John Knox (b. c. 1514–d. 1572) is still regarded by many as the father of the Scottish Reformation, and he made important contributions to the development of Protestant settlements in both the British Isles and the wider international Reformed community. Born in Haddington in East Lothian, Knox spent his early career as a priest and notary in Haddington before preaching tours by Thomas Guillaume and George Wishart enacted a profound religious conversion in him. He took part in the year-long Protestant occupation of St. Andrews Castle in 1546–1547, at which time he experienced his first call to the ministry, and in the decade that followed he preached and ministered in Berwick, Newcastle, and London as well as across Lowland Scotland and in Frankfurt and Geneva. During this period of exile Knox wrote the political tracts for which he gained notoriety, including the (to modern eyes) deeply misogynist First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, whose principal focus was Mary Tudor’s rule of England. Although only his account of the episode survives, Knox preached a sermon “vehement against idolatry” at Perth in May 1559, which triggered the riot seen as the beginning of the Scottish Reformation Rebellion, and he was essential to the Protestant Lords of the Congregation as a secretary, information gatherer, and rousing orator. Knox’s firsthand experience of Calvinism materially shaped the direction of the early Scottish kirk, through both his direct contributions to the writing of the Scots Confession of Faith and the First Book of Discipline (the kirk’s first polity) and through the usage in Scotland of the biblical and liturgical texts that the community at Geneva under Knox had written in the late 1550s. Knox’s frequent and bitter denunciations of the political establishment for compromising his vision of a “pure” Scottish church (particularly his vehement criticism of the Catholicism of Mary, Queen of Scots) led to his political marginalization soon after the rebellion. However, he continued to play an important role in the Scottish church as a national figurehead until his death, and during the 1560s he completed his masterwork, The History of the Reformation in Scotland, which framed how the story of the Scottish Reformation was told and understood until the modern era.

Biographies and General Studies

Many biographies of Knox exist, and all the works cited here provide a suitable narrative. However, Dawson 2015 and Marshall 2000 provide the best and fullest accounts of Knox’s life and times in clear modern English that incorporate all the previous scholarship, with Dawson’s Oxford Dictionary of National Biography entry (Dawson 2008) being the most condensed and useful if a student is looking for a single short work on Knox’s life. Hume Brown 1895 and Percy 2013 (originally published in 1937) are dated, but they address the European and English dimensions of his career. Janton 1967 makes a biography of Knox available to a non-English-speaking audience. Mason 1998, Ridley 1968, and Reid 1974 assess Knox’s life and career with particular interpretative slants.

Dawson, Jane E. A. “Knox, John (c. 1514–1572).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, New York: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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The most accessible and digestible account of Knox’s life, which also briefly covers his political thought, theology, and legacy. Institutional or personal subscription required for access.
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Dawson, Jane E. A. John Knox. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2015.
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Now the standard modern critical biography of Knox, and makes use of all his known writings, including the newly discovered letters to Goodman (see Letters from Exile: New Documents on the Marian Exile, 1553–9) and a range of new sources relating to the Marian exile and early Elizabethan England, chief among them Goodman’s own letter book.
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Hume Brown, Peter. John Knox: A Biography. 2 vols. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1895.
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Now outdated but still an extremely detailed narrative account of Knox’s life. The first major biography to trace his contribution to the wider international Reformed church and to the early English Puritan movement.
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Janton, Pierre. John Knox, ca. 1513–1572: L’homme et l’oeuvre. Paris: Didier, 1967.
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The most extensive treatment of Knox in a language other than English, featuring a full treatment of his life (Part 1), his thought (Part 2), and the style and genres of his writings (Part 3).
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Marshall, Rosalind Kay. John Knox. Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2000.
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More popular in style than other biographies of Knox but gives a useful range of insights into Knox’s relationships with others, particularly the women in his life.
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Mason, Roger A. John Knox and the British Reformations. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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The largest collection of critical essays on Knox to date and covers all aspects of his life and writings from a range of perspectives (individual chapters are highlighted in other sections).
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Percy, Eustace. John Knox. Reprint. Cambridge, UK: Lutterworth, 2013.
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Originally published in 1937. Percy’s biography gives good coverage to Knox’s career in both Scotland and Europe, presents a relatively balanced account of his successes and failures, and is engagingly written.
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Reid, W. Stanford. Trumpeter of God: A Biography of John Knox. New York: Charles Scribner’s, 1974.
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A self-professedly “interpretative” biography, which approaches Knox via the “specifically Protestant-biblical point of view of himself and the world in which he lived” (p. xiv), and argues that he saw himself as another Jeremiah.
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Ridley, Jasper. John Knox. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968.
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Portrays Knox in a largely critical light, which is a useful corrective to other biographical studies, but while it is strong on English and Continental aspects of Knox’s career it is weaker on the Scottish dimension.
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Editions of Knox’s Writings

Surprisingly, we still await a modern critical edition of Knox’s writings, and the standard edition remains that of Knox 1846–1864. Since then, two major additional collections of sources relating to Knox have been published: Lorimer 1875 and Dawson and Glassey 2005. All three should be consulted by those looking to read every major piece of evidence relating to him. The Laing edition (Knox 1846–1864) can be intimidating in terms of both its size and linguistically, as the level of archaic Scots and English can be very difficult to read. The edition of the History of the Reformation by Croft Dickinson (Knox 1949), rendered in modern English and stripped of Knox’s frequent documentary inserts, is ideal as an accessible way into the text, while Knox 1994, edited by Roger Mason, provides a good critical edition of Knox’s key political tracts, with a long analytical introduction and an impressive glossary of terms and biblical and patristic figures mentioned in the text. Knox 1995, edited by Kevin Reed, is scarce, but useful for those seeking a reader in Knox’s pastoral writings. Knox 2006 is the only modern translation of the First Blast into a language other than English. Although M’Crie 1812 is strictly speaking a biography, it is so full of relevant primary excerpts and material that it is has been included here. See Internet Archive for copies of all the major out-of-copyright primary and secondary historical works relating to Knox, including the Knox 1846–1864 (Laing’s edition of Knox’s writings).

Dawson, Jane E. A., and Lionel K. Glassey. “Some Unpublished Letters from John Knox to Christopher Goodman.” Scottish Historical Review 84 (2005): 166–201.
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The first new primary material relating to Knox for more than a century, this article features transcripts and analysis of five previously unknown letters from Knox and his secretary Richard Bannatyne to Christopher Goodman, dating from 1566 to 1569.
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Internet Archive.
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Provides free copies of all the major out-of-copyright biographies of Knox, the Laing edition of his writings, and all the 19th-century printed collections of sources and documents relating to Knox for reading online or for download in a range of formats.
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Knox, John. The Works of John Knox: Collected and Edited by D. Laing. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1846–1864.
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The standard edition of Knox’s works, in six volumes. Volumes 1 and 2 comprise the four books of the History of the Reformation in Scotland completed by Knox, while the other four give his other writings in largely chronological order. Volume 6 features a range of additional bibliographical information and errata to the preceding volumes.
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Knox, John. John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland. Edited [with an Introduction and Notes] by William Croft Dickinson, Etc. London: Thomas Nelson, 1949.
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The most accessible edition of the text of the History for non-Scots speakers as it is transliterated into English, and also excises all the documents originally inserted in the narrative of the text into a series of appendixes.
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Knox, John. On Rebellion. Edited by Roger Mason. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994.
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A modern critical edition of Knox’s tracts and documents relating to Knox’s interactions with the Lords of the Congregation, the General Assembly, and Mary Queen of Scots written in 1558. It also features a set of biographical notes on Knox’s contemporaries and on biblical, classical, and patristic figures cited by him.
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Knox, John. Selected Practical Writings of John Knox, Public Epistles, and Treatises, and Expositions to the Year 1559. Edited by Kevin Reed. Dallas: Presbyterian Heritage, 1995.
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This collection of excerpts focuses primarily on Knox’s early ministry in England and on the Continent, and it is useful for those interested in Knox’s pastoral work and theology.
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Knox, John. Premier coup de trompette contre le gouvernement monstrueux des femmes, 1558. Translated by Pierre Janton. Paris: Champion, 2006.
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Useful for those looking for a French translation of Knox’s most famous political tract.
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Lorimer, Peter. John Knox and the Church of England. London: Henry S. King, 1875.
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The first half gives a detailed narrative of Knox’s work in Newcastle and Berwick and with the English exile congregation in Geneva; the second half contains a series of previously unpublished documents from the period 1550–1552, chiefly pertaining to the Berwick ministry, and a letter to Knox from an unknown writer in London in 1566.
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M’Crie, Thomas. The Life of John Knox: Containing Illustrations of the History of the Reformation in Scotland, with Biographical Notices of the Principal Reformers, and Sketches of the Progress of Literature in Scotland . . . To Which Is Subjoined an Appendix, Consisting of Letters and Other Papers. Edinburgh: J. Ogle, 1812.
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Reprinted in many different editions globally. Although outdated and heavily biased in favor of Knox and a “providential” reading of the Protestant Reformation in Scotland, this work is still standard reading for the sheer volume of material it contains, both primary and secondary. Many editions of this can be found online.
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Bibliographic Aids

Knox 1846–1864 (cited under Editions of Knox’s Writing) is the standard edition of Knox’s writings. It does not give any sense of when Knox’s texts were published, and whether or not they circulated in manuscript first. Hazlett 1988 provides an ideal remedy to this with a short list detailing all Knox’s works with original date of composition and publication (when the latter is applicable), and should be kept at hand when navigating the Laing volumes. Kirk 1987 is essential reading for anyone trying to come to grips with the older historiography relating to Knox and the Scottish Reformation.

Hazlett, W. I. P. “A Working Bibliography of Writings by John Knox.” In Calviniana: Ideas and Influence of Jean Calvin. Edited by Robert V. Schnucker, 185–193. Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal, 1988.
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Useful as an “at-a-glance” checklist to Knox’s works and for confirming the original publication details of Knox’s texts (where applicable).
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Kirk, James. “The Scottish Reformation and Reign of James VI: A Select Critical Bibliography.” Records of the Scottish Church History Society 22.1 (1987): 113–155.
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Not available in electronic form and only covers literature up to the mid-1980s, but provides a masterful survey of the printed primary and secondary literature relating to Knox’s life and times, particularly the standard texts used by historians.
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Other Primary Sources Relating to Knox’s Life and Times

Knox’s History set several patterns for the wave of historical and biographical writings that emerged in the late 16th and 17th centuries, and which form a core strand of prose in post-Reformation Scotland. These include Melville 1842, Row and Laing 1842, and Calderwood 1842–1846, a multivolume masterwork. A gap of more than thirty years exists between the completion of Knox’s text and the first of these later narratives (Melville’s Autobiography, completed in 1601–1602), but they are linked to his work through their shared aim of narrating the struggle of God’s “elect” people against the forces of tyranny. In Knox’s case, the object of opprobrium is the forces of French-backed Catholicism; in the later narratives, it is the episcopal and absolutist leanings of James VI (James I in England) in his (increasingly successful) attempts to control the church after assuming full political control in the mid-1580s. All of these sources contributed to the portrayal of Knox as the heroic reformer of legend, particularly the idea that Knox intended to establish a form of “proto-presbyterianism” in Scotland from the outset of the Reformation. Thomson 1839–1845 is the standard edition of the records of the General Assembly, the national body of the kirk, in its crucial formative period in the decades immediately after 1560. Bannatyne and Pitcairn 1836 provides an eyewitness account of Knox’s later life from his personal secretary. An important new collection of contextual sources for Knox’s life, relating to the Marian Exile, is available via the Letters from Exile project (Dawson 2015) led by Jane Dawson and hosted by the University of Edinburgh.

Bannatyne, Richard, and Robert Pitcairn. Memoriales of Transactions in Scotland, A.D. MDLXIX–A.D. MDLXXIII. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1836.
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Bannatyne (d. 1605) was Knox’s secretary, and his personal recollections of Knox (including reported speech) present the reformer in an extremely flattering light. Bannatyne also portrays him as strongly anti-episcopal, and he gives detailed information on politics in Scotland during the Marian civil war.
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Calderwood, David. The History of the Kirk of Scotland . . . Edited from the Original Manuscript by T. Thomson. 8 vols. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842–1846.
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Edited from the manuscripts of the minister and antiquary David Calderwood (b. c. 1575–d. 1650), Calderwood’s History is the largest single printed collection of primary material relating to the Scottish church in the 16th and early 17th centuries and features full transcriptions of a wide range of (now lost) documents. Available online for purchase.
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Dawson, Jane E. A. “Letters from Exile: New Documents on the Marian Exile, 1553–9.” Edinburgh: Edinburgh University, 2015.
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Comprises critical editions of a range of new documents relating to the leading figures of the Marian Exile in Denbighshire Record Office in Ruthin, chief among them Christopher Goodman’s Letter Book, extant as an early-18th-century transcript in the Plas Power MSS (DD/PP/839).
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Melville, James. The Autobiography and Diary of Mr James Melvill with a Continuation of the Diary, Edited from Manuscripts by R. Pitcairn. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842.
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Notable for its account of St. Andrews (where James Melville was a student) during Knox’s last years and for Melville’s account of one of Knox’s last sermons.
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Row, John, and David Laing. The History of the Kirk of Scotland, from the Year 1558 to August 1637. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1842.
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Corroborates and expands upon the narratives developed by Calderwood and Melville, with a summary history of the first two decades after the Reformation, but also contains a number of apparently eyewitness accounts relating to Knox not recorded elsewhere.
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Thomson, Thomas, ed. Booke of the Universall Kirk: Acts and Proceedings of the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland. 3 vols. Edinburgh: Bannatyne Club, 1839–1845.
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The standard edition of the records of the General Assembly, the national body of the Scottish Kirk, which convened at least twice a year between 1560 and 1597, when James VI seized control of when and where it met. Essential for understanding the development of the ministry in post-Reformation Scotland.
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General Overviews of Reformation Scotland

The body of scholarship relating to the Scottish Reformation is large, and the texts chosen here are representative examples of major interpretative strands of research. Donaldson 2008 and Kirk 1989 represent opposing responses to the question of whether the early Scottish Protestant church was Episcopal or Presbyterian in nature, an issue which was doggedly pursued and debated through much of the latter half of the 20th century by authors who were often at least partially guided by their own confessional biases (Ryrie 2006 gives a useful summary of this debate). McRoberts 1962 is the first work to interpret the Reformation from a “Catholic” perspective, while Cowan 1982 is a pioneering work on the impact of the Reformation at the local level (this latter field is discussed in the works cited under Knox’s Later Years and the Later Reformation in Scotland). Dawson 2007, Wormald 1981, and Ryrie 2010 are the best three modern syntheses of these different strands.

Cowan, Ian B. The Scottish Reformation: Church and Society in Sixteenth Century Scotland. London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1982.
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Drawing on the author’s influential pamphlet, Regional Aspects of the Scottish Reformation (1978), this was the first overview of the Reformation that paid sufficient attention to regional variations in the reception of reform, which has since become a major field of study in its own right.
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Dawson, Jane E. A. Scotland Re-formed, 1488–1587. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2007.
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The most up-to-date synthesis of scholarship on 16th-century Scotland, especially notable for its extensive use of vignettes relating to everyday life (often presented in separate text boxes).
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Donaldson, Gordon. The Scottish Reformation. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2008.
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Originally published in 1960. Published version of the Birkbeck Lectures in Ecclesiastical History that Donaldson gave at Cambridge in 1957–1958. Its central argument is that although the Reformation fundamentally altered Scotland’s constitutional settlement and diplomatic relations with France and England, the church remained fundamentally Episcopalian in nature.
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Kirk, James. Patterns of Reform: Continuity and Change in the Reformation Kirk. Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1989.
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A collection of articles, some new and some previously unpublished, which collectively showcase Kirk’s fundamental view of the Scottish kirk, namely that it was Presbyterian in structure and settlement from its very earliest days.
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McRoberts, David, ed. Essays on the Scottish Reformation, 1513–1625. Glasgow: Burns, 1962.
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Although over half a century old, this collection of essays (also published as Innes Review, 10) presented the first scholarly challenge to the idea that the Scottish Reformation completely swept away a corrupt and failing Roman Catholic Church.
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Ryrie, Alec. Palgrave Advances in the European Reformations. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
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Chapter 6 on “Britain and Ireland” by Alec Ryrie (pp. 124–146) succinctly outlines the major trends in Scottish Reformation historiography, while the rest of the work sets events in Britain in a broader geographical and cultural context.
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Ryrie, Alec. The Origins of the Scottish Reformation. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press, 2010.
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Presents a synthesis of all major scholarship on the Scottish Reformation up to 2010, and makes a novel argument that the Scottish Reformation was a revolution due to both the speed and the unexpectedness with which it took place, and the lasting impact it had on Scottish culture and society.
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Wormald, Jenny. Court, Kirk, and Community: Scotland, 1470–1625. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1981.
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Insightful on noble politics and Renaissance culture, this is a relatively short and lively overview of later Stewart Scotland with a particular focus on the reigns of Mary and James VI.
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Knox as Theologian and Minister

Knox, like Martin Luther, was not a systematic theologian, and he developed many of his ideas in response to specific issues or crises that confronted him, often manifesting in his preaching (for which we have a very poor documentary record, as only one published sermon survives). Greaves 1980 provides a general overview of Knox’s thought synthesized from various sources, Torrance 1974 looks at Knox’s reaction to specific doctrines such as predestination, while Burns 1998 and Wright 1998 explore particular formative personal and intellectual influences on him. Knox was uncompromising on virtually every theological issue—he had, for example, an unwavering belief in the idolatry of the Mass and the invalidity of any religious ceremony or office without direct scriptural warrant. As Almasy 2009 and Healey 1992 show, Knox also felt his own preaching often provided a lone prophetic voice, in the manner of Old Testament prophets such as Jeremiah, warning the powers that be about religious backsliding. However, Kyle 2002 examines Knox’s actions in his ministry and shows how caring and sympathetic a pastor he could be, particularly to those struggling with their faith.

Almasy, Rudolph P. “John Knox and A Godly Letter: Fashioning and Refashioning the Exilic ‘I.’” In Literature and the Scottish Reformation. Edited by Crawford Gribben and David George Mullan, 95–109. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
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This article argues that Knox uses a rhetorical strategy in A Godly Letter of Warning (1554) that first identifies him with Jeremiah, but which soon cedes to a Pauline vision of a pastor urging his English audience to embrace their own communities.
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Burns, J. H. “Knox: Scholastic and Canonistic Echoes.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 117–129. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Burns suggests that Knox’s training as a notary and subsequent engagement with canon law was a formative factor in his thought, albeit one that he completely rejected, instead of looking for “scholastic” influences derived from Knox’s possible education at St. Andrews under John Mair.
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Greaves, Richard. Theology and Revolution in the Scottish Reformation: Studies in the Thought of John Knox. Grand Rapids, MI: Christian University Press, 1980.
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The most comprehensive single work addressing the different aspects of Knox’s theology—his soteriology, his views on resistance to the magistrate, covenant theology and predestination, and the Christian society are all examined.
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Healey, Robert M. “John Knox’s ‘History’: A ‘Compleat’ Sermon on Christian Duty.” Church History 61.3 (1992): 319–333.
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Reads the History, never published in Knox’s lifetime, as an extended sermon (written at several points of crisis in the decade after the Reformation Rebellion) reminding Scottish Christians to obey God and to compel their magistrates (such as Queen Mary) to follow God’s laws as well.
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Kyle, Richard. The Ministry of John Knox: Pastor, Preacher and Prophet. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellon, 2002.
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Presents a largely positive assessment of Knox as a minister and preacher, who (he argues) was kind, compassionate, and tender to his flocks, and who exhibited an exceptional rhetorical power in the pulpit, grounded in his belief that he was a prophet foretelling the impending end times.
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Torrance, I. “Patrick Hamilton and John Knox: A Study in the Doctrine of Justification by Faith.” Archiv für Reformationgeschichte 65 (1974): 171–184.
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Torrance argues that while Patrick Hamilton brought the doctrine of justification to Scotland, Knox enriched it in a Scottish context by adding a Christological focus to it. Knox’s interpretation ultimately became enshrined in Article XV of the Scots Confession of Faith.
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Wright, David F. “John Knox and the Early Church Fathers.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 99–116. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Wright strongly rejects claims by Janton and Greaves, who based their assertions primarily on analysis of a range of quotations from Tertullian in the First Blast, that Knox made extensive use of patristic sources in his writings—he finds no evidence for this.
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Knox as Political Theorist

Most discussions of Knox’s political theory center on interpreting his attitude toward the appointed magistrates and to what extent it was permissible to disobey them on grounds of religious conscience. Burns 1996, Mason 1998a, Mason 1998b, and Dawson 1998 tackle this issue directly by examining the First Blast of the Trumpet and the various appeals to the nobility and commonalty that Knox made, and all these authors develop the idea that Knox made an important distinction between communities that had entered into a covenant with God (such as England under Edward VI and the Scots after the Reformation Rebellion) and those that had not, and the duty incumbent upon everyone in the former to remove “tyrannous” rulers from power. Gray 1939 and Greaves 1976 provide broader overviews of the sources and themes within Knox’s political theory. Gribben 2006 and Farrow 2009 explore political and rhetorical issues in his other major texts beyond the First Blast.

Burns, J. H. The True Law of Kingship. Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.
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A comprehensive study of Scottish intellectual attitudes toward kingship and the rights of the monarch in the 15th and 16th centuries. Chapter 4 (“Reformation and Resistance: John Knox” [pp. 122–152]) deals particularly with Knox’s ideas in the 1558 tracts.
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Dawson, Jane E. A. “Trumpeting Resistance: Christopher Goodman and John Knox.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 130–153. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Compares Knox and Goodman’s attitudes toward resistance to the magistrate using three “yardsticks” developed by Quentin Skinner—Christian obedience as mandated by Romans 13, the idea of a covenant with God overriding this, and whether an entire people were allowed to resist—and argues that Goodman had adopted a fully radicalized stance on all three by 1558, while Knox took at least another six years to fully actualize a similar point of view.
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Farrow, Kenneth D. “Theological Controversy in the Wake of John Knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet.” In Literature and the Scottish Reformation. Edited by Crawford Gribben and David George Mullan, 111–126. Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2009.
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Farrow analyzes the rhetorical strategies used in three responses to Knox’s First Blast of the Trumpet (1558): John Aylmer’s written reply to the text, and the more general tracts answering Knox by Ninian Winzet and Quentin Kennedy, two of the leading Scottish Catholic respondents to the Reformation.
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Gray, John. “The Political Theory of John Knox.” Church History 8.2 (1939): 132–147.
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Older, but still a short and stimulating discussion of the major aspects of Knox’s political theory. Rejects the notion that Knox can be understood as a “political theorist,” as his one guiding principle was obedience to God and scripture.
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Greaves, Richard L. “John Knox, the Reformed Tradition, and the Development of Resistance Theory.” Journal of Modern History 48.3 (1976): 1–36.
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Greaves examines the intellectual sources for Knox’s views on lawful resistance to tyranny, and he rejects the notion that Calvinism was responsible for this aspect of his political views. Instead, a wide range of sources—Lutheran, patristic, and, above all, scriptural— played a far more important role.
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Gribben, Crawford. “John Knox, Reformation History and National Self-Fashioning.” Reformation and Renaissance Review 8 (2006): 48–66.
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Rejects the idea that Knox’s History should be narrowly read as an example of writings linking the growth of Protestantism to an increasing trend toward Anglicization and closer Anglo-Scottish amity; instead, Gribben argues that Knox attempted to simultaneously appeal to more inclusive ideas of “Scottish” and “British” nationalisms.
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Mason, Roger A. Kingship and the Commonweal: Political Thought in Renaissance and Reformation Scotland. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 1998a.
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A collection of essays—some new and some substantially revised or expanded since their initial publication—on political thought in Scotland in the Early Modern period, with discussion of Knox (chapters 5 and 6) appearing alongside chapters on John Mair, George Buchanan, and changing Scottish ideas on monarchy, tyrannicide, and the uses of history.
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Mason, Roger A. “Knox, Resistance and the Royal Supremacy.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 154–175. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998b.
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Following on from Dawson’s work in the same volume, this essay argues that Knox’s theory of resistance took the acceptance of a program of Protestant reform (under Edward VI in England, and in the Reformation Rebellion in Scotland) as a sign of a covenant with God, which compelled the people to thereafter remove any magistrate who did not fully uphold or comply with the Protestant faith.
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The Martyrdom of George Wishart and the “Castilian” Episode

George Wishart is widely hailed as the single most important figure in Knox’s conversion to Protestantism and eventual calling to the ministry. However, frustratingly little is known about his life or thought. Dotterweich 2004 collates all the important information known about him, while Dotterweich 2014 provides a series of perspectives on Wishart’s ministry and its role in the broader history of the early Scottish Reformation. Knox joined in the occupation of St. Andrews Castle between 1546 and 1547 as part of a group of Protestants known as the “Castilians,” who had murdered Cardinal David Beaton, the archbishop of St. Andrews, when they first seized the castle. The “Castilian” episode led directly to Knox preaching for the first time (in a sermon given in Holy Trinity Parish Church on Daniel 7:24–5), and he was held as a galley slave for nineteen months by the French after they successfully shelled the castle into submission on behalf of the Scottish government in 1547. Sanderson 2001 is the most detailed narrative account of this episode, while Merriman 2000 provides the definitive survey of the 1540s generally. Edington 1998 looks more closely at Knox’s experience of conversion once within the castle walls, and Dunbar 2002 examines the “Castilian” episode from the perspective of John Winram, one of Knox’s closest contemporaries.

Dotterweich, Martin Holt. “Wishart, George (c. 1513?–1546).” In Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004.
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Wishart was a major influence on Knox, who credited his preaching with convincing him to follow the path of reform. This article synthesizes all the known facts about Wishart’s life, and looks briefly at his legacy and legend.
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Dotterweich, Martin Holt, ed. George Wishart Quincentennial Conference Proceedings. Papers presented at a conference held at St. Andrews University on 30 August 2013. Raleigh, NC: Lulu, 2014.
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Proceedings from a conference held in St. Andrews in 2013 to mark the 500th anniversary of Wishart’s birth. The essays primarily discuss Wishart’s life in the context of the early Scottish Reformation. Available online for purchase.
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Dunbar, Linda J. Reforming the Scottish Church: John Winram (c. 1492–1582) and the Example of Fife. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2002.
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Winram was prior of St. Serf’s and a canon of the Augustinian Priory in St. Andrews, and he was committed to Catholic reform of the church until well into the 1550s. However, he played an important role in developing a program of public preaching and disputation in St. Andrews during the “Castilian” siege, including allowing Knox to preach in the parish church. Chapters 1 and 2 discuss this period in detail.
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Edington, Carol. “John Knox and the Castilians: A Crucible of Reforming Opinion.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 74–96. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Using Knox’s History as the main source, Edington aims to re-create the events leading to Knox’s conversion and joining with the “Castilians,” and evaluates in particular the influence of Henry Balnaves, John Rough, and David Lindsay of the Mount on his decision.
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Merriman, Marcus. The Rough Wooings: Mary, Queen of Scots, 1542–1551. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 2000.
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Sets the “Castilian” episode within the broader three-sided conflict (among England, Scotland, and France) centered on attempts by Henry VIII to secure the marriage of the infant Mary, Queen of Scots to his son Edward.
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Sanderson, Margaret H. B. Cardinal of Scotland: David Beaton, c. 1494–1546. Edinburgh: John Donald, 2001.
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The definitive biography of one of Knox’s most dangerous early opponents; provides the most detailed account in print of his murder at the hands of the early “Castilian” group.
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Knox and England

Knox ministered at Berwick from 1549 until 1551 and fostered a close-knit community that included members of the local elite (such as the Bowes family, into which he married) and a range of Scottish expatriates. Knox moved to Newcastle in Spring 1551, and later in that year he so impressed Edward VI’s governor, John Dudley, the duke of Northumberland, during a sermon that he moved to London, where he became a royal chaplain. He remained based there until the accession of Queen Mary forced him and other Protestants into exile at the beginning of 1554. Surprisingly, Lorimer 1875 is still the only monograph-length overview of Knox’s time in England, and it includes several documents not printed by Laing – this remains the best place to access them. Chavura 2011 provides good context for those seeking to understand parallel intellectual developments in England relating to government and resistance, developments of which Knox was also part. Kellar 2003, a study of the parallel development of the early reformed churches in Scotland and England; MacCulloch 1999, an account of Edwardian religious policy; Duffy 2005, a survey of English Catholicism in the late medieval and Early Modern periods; and Marshall and Ryrie 2002, a collection of essays on the early English Reformation, all provide useful context for the England in which Knox found himself. Collinson 1988 and Durston and Eales 1996 are essential texts for understanding the development of the Puritan movement in England, which Knox’s ministry and works directly influenced.

Chavura, Stephen A. Tudor Protestant Political Thought, 1547–1603. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2011.
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The author examines the development of political thought in England between the reigns of Edward VI and James VI (James I in England). Argues that the disruption to English political life caused by the continual shifts in religion forced recognizably “modern” attitudes to government and authority by consent to emerge in England.
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Collinson, Patrick. The Birthpangs of Protestant England: Religious and Cultural Change in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1988.
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Based on the Anstey memorial lectures in the University of Kent at Canterbury that the author delivered in 1986, this short but hugely influential work looks at the development of Protestant culture in England from a range of perspectives, including in urban centers and among families.
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Duffy, Eamon. The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England, c. 1400–c. 1580. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005.
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This mammoth study of lay religious culture in England makes a convincing case that a thriving and vibrant medieval piety was destroyed by the Reformation in England. Useful for understanding Knox’s opposition. Originally published in 1992.
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Durston, Christopher, and Jacqueline Eales, eds. The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 1996.
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Knox’s influence on the English exile congregations was felt strongly in the Puritan movement that developed in England in Elizabeth’s reign. This collection of essays assesses the long-standing debate regarding definitions of “Puritanism,” looks at material and cultural aspects of Puritan worship and at the development of Puritanism across the long 17th century.
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Kellar, Claire. Scotland, England and the Scottish Reformation, 1534–1561. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199266708.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
Kellar challenges the traditional wisdom that the reform movements in England and Scotland were separate phenomena; instead, she argues that the two were both closely intertwined and reactive to one another. Useful for setting Knox’s period in England in a broader “British” context.
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Lorimer, Peter. John Knox and the Church of England. London: Henry S. King, 1875.
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The first half gives a detailed narrative of Knox’s work in Newcastle and Berwick and with the English exile congregation in Geneva; the second half contains a series of previously unpublished documents from the period 1550–1552, chiefly pertaining to the Berwick ministry, and a letter to Knox from an unknown writer in London in 1566.
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MacCulloch, Diarmaid. Tudor Church Militant: Edward VI and the Protestant Reformation. London: Penguin, 1999.
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Based on the Birkbeck Lectures at Cambridge in 1997–1998, this is the most accessible single volume for understanding the development of the Protestant church in the short reign of Edward VI (r. 1546–1553).
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Marshall, Peter, and Alec Ryrie, eds. The Beginnings of English Protestantism. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
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This collection of essays argues that there was a considerable “popular” interest in reform in the early English reformation, and chapter 6 by Thomas Freeman (“Dissenters from a Dissenting Church” [pp. 129–156]) looks at fragmentation within the ranks of Protestant converts, notably the Freewillers, between 1550 and 1558.
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Knox, Frankfurt, and Geneva

Knox first arrived at Dieppe after leaving England, and he accepted an invitation to become minister to the community of Marian exiles at Frankfurt in November 1554. A bitter debate unfolded over the winter of 1554–1555 as to whether the Edwardian Book of Common Order (1552) should be used for the liturgy, with Knox firmly opposing its wholesale adoption owing to a number of elements not provided for by scripture. The arrival in March into the polarized community of Richard Cox and several others from the Strasbourg community of Marian exiles saw a swift backlash against Knox. It also resulted in a charge of treason brought against him for comparing Charles V to Nero in his Faithfull Admonition (1554), forcing him to leave the city under a cloud. The “Troubles at Frankfurt” (as they became known) have been the subject of considerable debate—see Cameron 1998, Danner 1999, Dawson 2015, Duguid 2012, and Simpson 1975 for the various interpretations. Knox returned to Scotland for a year and then traveled to Geneva in 1556, with his new wife Marjorie Bowes and mother-in-law Elizabeth in tow. He took up the ministry of the English exile community there until his permanent return to Scotland in 1559, and the Genevan community produced a then-definitive English translation of the Bible and The Forme of Prayers and Psalmes of David, combining a guide to Reformed liturgy and ceremony and a metrical Psalter. Collectively, these works would have a profound impact on the development of Reformed communities in the English-speaking world. Gordon 2009 discusses Knox and the exile community at Geneva as part of the bigger story of Calvin’s life. Martin 1915 and Maxwell 1931, along with Dawson’s collection of online documents, provide access to essential material relating to the Genevan community and their texts. Dawson 2015 also provides an excellent survey of the Frankfurt and Geneva periods (chapters 7 and 10, respectively).

Cameron, Euan. “Frankfurt and Geneva: The European Context of John Knox’s Reformation.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 51–73. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Useful as a short and succinct account of the “Troubles at Frankfurt,” but also makes the argument that the opposition he faced there stemmed from his “popular” and preaching-based approach to reformation, against a gradual and “top down” approach to reform favored by Cox and his party.
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Danner, Dan G. Pilgrimage to Puritanism: History and Theology of the Marian Exiles at Geneva, 1555–1560. New York: Peter Lang, 1999.
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The most detailed single-volume account of the group of English exiles at Geneva, which Knox would lead for several years.
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Dawson, Jane E. A. “Letters from Exile: New Documents on the Marian Exile, 1553–9.” Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh, 2015.
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Comprises critical editions of a range of new documents relating to the leading figures of the Marian Exile in Denbighshire Record Office in Ruthin, chief among them Christopher Goodman’s Letter Book, extant as an early-18th-century transcript in the Plas Power MSS (DD/PP/839). See also Duguid 2012.
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Duguid, Timothy. “The ‘Troubles at Frankfurt’: A New Chronology.” Reformation & Renaissance Review 14.3 (2012): 243–268.
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Uses the sources found in Jane Dawson’s “Letters from Exile” project to create a new narrative of the first year of the Frankfurt community, which greatly revises the timeline of events found in previous historiography and reevaluates the relationships among Cox, Knox, Goodman, and the other main participants.
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Gordon, Bruce. Calvin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009.
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Both constitutes the standard modern biography of the Genevan reformer and addresses his influence on Knox and the Scottish Reformation in a wider international Reformed context.
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Martin, Charles. Les Protestants anglais réfugiés à Genève au temps du Calvin, 1555–1560. Geneva, Switzerland: Librairie A. Jullien, 1915.
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Contains a printed edition of the records of the English-speaking congregation at Geneva between 1555 and 1560.
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Maxwell, William D. John Knox’s Genevan Service Book 1556: The Liturgical Portions of the Genevan Service Book. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd, 1931.
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An edition of the revised liturgy used by the English congregation at Geneva, based partly on the 1552 Book of Common Prayer but with the incorporation of French Reformed practices developed by Calvin and Valérand Poullain.
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Simpson, Martin A. John Knox and the Troubles Begun at Frankfurt. West Linton, Scotland: M. A. Simpson, 1975.
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Contains a detailed analysis of A Brief Discours and Knox’s account of his expulsion from Frankfurt, but claims that all source texts were falsified by later English religious controversialists, a view that Cameron (item 1, p. 59) rejects.
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The Reformation Rebellion

The extent of Knox’s role in the Reformation Rebellion of 1559–1560 has been hotly contested, and Dawson 2015 (chapter 12) provides a good overview of this. Cameron 1972 and Maxwell 2010 look at the evidence for Knox’s involvement in the production of the Scots Confession of Faith and the First Book of Discipline, the foundation documents of the Scottish Protestant Kirk. Sanderson 1997, Bardgett 1989, and Verschuur 2006 are all studies of the unfolding of the Reformation Rebellion at the local level, and they provide a useful discussion of Knox’s travels around Scotland in the year of the rebellion. Ritchie 1997 and Donaldson 1981 look at events from the perspective of Mary of Guise and the Scottish noble elites.

Bardgett, Frank D. Scotland Reformed: The Reformation in Angus and the Mearns. Edinburgh: John Donald, 1989.
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Survey the movements and motivations of many of the Lords of the Congregation during the Reformation Rebellion, particularly John Erskine of Dun, one of Knox’s leading supporters.
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Cameron, James K. The First Book of Discipline. Edinburgh: Saint Andrew, 1972.
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The only critical edition of the First Book compiled from all known manuscripts. The extensive introduction reconstructs its development, its reception, and Knox’s potential contribution to it.
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Donaldson, Gordon. All the Queen’s Men. London: Batsford Academic, 1981.
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A dense but helpful study that lays out the political and social networks of the competing political factions in Scotland from the Reformation Rebellion to the majority of James VI in the 1580s.
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Maxwell, Ian, ed. Theology in Scotland 17.2 (2010).
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A series of papers marking the 450th anniversary of the Scottish Reformation, this volume includes a new edition of the Scots Confession of Faith and an introductory discussion by Ian Hazlett (pp. 33–66 inclusive).
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Ritchie, Pamela E. Mary of Guise in Scotland, 1546–1560: A Political Career. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 1997.
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The standard political biography of Mary of Guise, which also argues that her prime motivation was to protect the dynastic interests of her daughter to the Scottish throne and, by extension, those of her Guise family in their “Franco-British” project.
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Sanderson, Margaret H. B. Ayrshire and the Reformation: People and Change, 1490–1600. East Linton, Scotland: Tuckwell, 1997.
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A detailed narrative of the reform movement in Ayr, the earliest and most radical burgh in Scotland in terms of its adoption of Protestantism. Knox’s movements in Ayrshire and his later exile there are discussed.
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Verschuur, Mary. Politics or Religion? The Reformation in Perth, 1540–1570. Edinburgh: Dunedin Academic Press, 2006.
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Includes a detailed discussion on Knox’s sermon “vehement against idolatry,” which triggered the Reformation Rebellion in May 1559, while tracing the broader development of a “popular” interest in reform among the artisanal and burgess classes in Perth that predates Knox’s arrival in the city.
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Knox’s Later Years and the Later Reformation in Scotland

Knox was appointed as minister of St. Giles in Edinburgh shortly after the enactment of a Protestant political settlement, but the presence of Mary, Queen of Scots and entrenched religious factionalism in the burgh meant that his ministry had limited success, and his time there was punctuated by extended stays in Ayrshire (where he completed the writing of The History of the Reformation in Scotland), England (where he became involved in the Vestments Controversy), and St. Andrews. Lynch 1998 details the difficulties Knox faced asserting his brand of radical discipline in the capital, while MacDonald 1998 looks at the broader difficulties faced by the kirk in establishing itself. A key part of Knox’s religious message was upholding of moral and social discipline, and Graham 1996, Graham 1998, and Todd 2002 critically assess how far this culture of discipline was adopted in Scotland (Graham 1998 looks at parishes with which Knox was directly connected), while Ryrie 2013 sets this in a wider British context.

Graham, Michael F. The Uses of Reform: “Godly Discipline” and Popular Behaviour in Scotland and Beyond, 1560–1610. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1996.
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Narrower in chronological terms than Todd’s work (item 4), it also focuses more on statistical analysis of kirk session records to identify the types of sin most frequently prosecuted by session elders.
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Graham, Michael F. “Knox on Discipline: Conversionary Zeal or Rose-Tinted Nostalgia?” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 268–285. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Compares kirk session records for the 1570s in Edinburgh, St. Andrews, and Aberdeen against Knox’s accounts of early “godly” discipline after the Reformation in his History, and finds that these urban sessions were not as zealous or well developed as Knox’s account suggests.
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Lynch, Michael. “John Knox: Minister of Edinburgh and Commissioner of the Kirk.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 242–267. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Revisits the author’s discussion of Knox’s ministry in his Edinburgh and the Reformation (1981), taking into account new evidence and secondary interpretations since then; concludes that Knox’s ministry, like reformation in the town, advanced intermittently, and only when a party favorable to Protestantism was in power.
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MacDonald, Alan R. The Jacobean Kirk, 1567–1625: Sovereignty, Polity and Liturgy. Ashgate, UK: Aldershot, 1998.
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Short but definitive account of the development of the church in Scotland after the Reformation, which argues that the majority of the ministry were moderate in their views on episcopacy and the royal supremacy; fully rejects the idea of an all-powerful “Melvillian” party.
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Ryrie, Alec. Being Protestant in Reformation Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199565726.001.0001Save Citation »Export Citation »E-mail Citation »
For those interested in understanding the emotional response of Protestants like Knox to their worship, this work also features detailed discussion of the experience of prayer, scripture, communal worship, and death among early British Protestant communities.
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Todd, Margo. The Culture of Protestantism in Early Modern Scotland. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2002.
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Examining virtually every known kirk session record, Todd provides a broad-scale narrative of the rigorous Calvinist discipline that emerged in Scotland between c. 1560 and c. 1640 and argues that its appeal lay in its focus on public penitence, dispute resolution, and social care, and in its provision of a well-defined Protestant scheme of liturgy and worship.
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Knox, Language, and Debate

Knox was described by Robert Crawford as “the first Scot to achieve literary mastery over English prose” (Scotland’s Books, p. 122), and considerable debate has occurred over his frequent (but inconsistent) use of Anglicized word-forms and whether he, or the relative dearth of printed books in Scots compared to the ubiquity of Anglicized religious texts, played a greater role in the increasingly “de-Scotticized” tendencies of Scottish literature in the 17th and 18th centuries. Farrow 2004, a full-length study of this issue, argues that Knox’s writings are much more nuanced and multilayered than this reductive approach suggests, while Smith 2012 sets excerpts of Knox within a broader range of Older Scots texts. Kyle and Johnson 2009 provides a survey of Knox’s individual works that explores many of the rhetorical elements of his writing. The issue of language was one that the earliest Catholic respondents to Knox’s polemic gleefully exploited, and several engaged Knox and his supporters in public disputations (recorded in Knox’s History) and in a series of printed pamphlets in which the defense of a “purer” form of Scots vernacular, free from Anglicized Protestant tendencies, became a key issue. The Abbot of Crossraguel, Quentin Kennedy, and the Linlithgow priest and schoolmaster Ninian Winzet rose to the challenge of defending the Catholic faith publicly at the height of the Reformation. Kuipers 1964 and Winzet 1888–1890 are critical editions of their texts aimed at Knox and his fellow Protestants.

Farrow, Kenneth D. John Knox: Reformation Rhetoric and the Traditions of Scots Prose, 1490–1570. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2004.
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The only monograph-length study to assess Knox’s works from a literary and linguistic perspective, this book refutes the reductive image of Knox as an “Anglicized” writer and analyzes his output across four genres: the History, devotional writings, letters, and admonitory epistles.
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Kennedy, Quentin. “Ane Compendius Tractive Conform to the Scripturis of almychtie GOD, ressoun, and authoritie” (1558). In The Miscellany of the Wodrow Society. Vol. 1. Edited by David Laing. Edinburgh: Wodrow Society, 1844.
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Most accessible edition of the text, and printed with “Ane Answer to the Compendius Tractive” (1563) by John Davidson, principal of the University of Glasgow, which follows at pp. 175–258.
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Kuipers, Cornelius H. Quentin Kennedy, 1520–1564: Two Eucharistic Tracts. Nijmegen, The Netherlands: Drukkerij Gebr. Janssen, 1964.
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A printed version of a PhD dissertation from the University of Nijmegen, this includes critical editions of Ane litil breif tracteit (1560) and Ane Compendious ressonyng (1561), which defend transubstantiation and the Mass, respectively.
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Kyle, Richard, and Dale Johnson. John Knox: An Introduction to His Life and Works. Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2009.
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Approaches Knox’s life via his writings, which are examined in chronological order; an excellent volume for scholars trying to get a better sense of individual texts.
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Smith, Jeremy. Older Scots: A Linguistic Reader. 5th Series. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 2012.
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Gives a full historical account of the development of Older Scots (Part 1), and a wide range of textual samples (Part 2), with additional supporting material (Part 3)—ideal for those interested in assessing for themselves the extent to which Knox’s language embraces “Scotticisms.”
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Winzet, Ninian. Certain Tractates together with the Book of Four Score Three Questions and a Translation of Vincentius Lirinensis. 2 vols. Edited by James King Hewison. Edinburgh: Scottish Text Society, 1888–1890.
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Standard edition of Winzet’s works; the Book of Four Score Three Questions most directly attacks the use of vernacular language by Knox and other Protestants as a means to beguile and seduce uneducated parishioners.
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Knox, Women, and Gender

The deeply misogynistic tone of the First Blast readily lends itself to sensational quotations, but this surface reading of the text misunderstands Knox’s view of women and royal authority as well as the contradictions and tensions within it. Felch 1995b, Healey 1994, and Shephard 1994 recognize these tensions and debate and discuss Knox’s attitudes to women and female rule in depth. Collinson 1998, Felch 1995a, Frankforter 1987, and Newman 1990 survey his correspondence with Elizabeth Bowes (his mother-in-law) and Anne Locke, whom he first met in London and who remained a close correspondent and friend. Anne came to Geneva and published an English translation of Calvin’s sermons on the Song of Hezekiah, with a series of sonnets based on Psalm 51, the only text published by a woman from Knox’s congregation. Many equally sensational accounts of Knox’s confrontations with Queen Mary exist, and Marshall 2000 (cited under Biographies and General Studies), in particular, dwells on these meetings. Wormald 1998 and Walton 2006 represent the most useful scholarly interpretations of the interviews.

Collinson, Patrick. “John Knox, the Church of England and the Women of England.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 74–96. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Alongside summary accounts of the Knox-Bowes and Knox-Locke correspondences, this essay argues that Knox’s relationship with women, like his relationship with the English church, reveals the inherent tensions in his personality—national religious leader, on the one hand, and naturally small-scale sectarian nonconformist, on the other.
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Felch, Susan M. “‘Deir Sister’: The Letters of John Knox and Anne Vaughan Lok.” Renaissance & Reformation 19.4 (1995a): 47–68.
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As well as being the most accessible overview of the correspondence between Knox and Locke (referred to as “Lok” throughout), this article challenges the traditional view of Locke/Lok as subject to Knox in their exchanges and sees her as both a strong woman and a spiritual equal to him.
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Felch, Susan M. “The Rhetoric of Biblical Authority: John Knox and the Question of Women Author(s).” Sixteenth Century Journal 26.4 (1995b): 805–822.
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In reading Knox’s First Blast alongside his letters to his female correspondents, Felch finds that rather than rejecting spiritual equality between the sexes, Knox’s “powerful verbal rhetoric divides idolatrous from godly while uniting both sexes in obedience to God and submission to his word” (p. 805).
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Frankforter, A. Daniel. “Elizabeth Bowes and John Knox: A Woman and Reformation Theology.” Church History 56.3 (1987): 333–347.
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While this article upholds the standard view that Knox saw women as inferior and subject to men, it assesses the corpus of extant letters to Bowes and infers from them that she directly influenced the development of his thought on several occasions.
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Healey, Robert M. “Waiting for Deborah: John Knox and Four Ruling Queens.” Sixteenth Century Journal 25.2 (1994): 371–386.
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Examines Knox’s attitudes to Mary and Elizabeth Tudor, Marie de Guise, and Mary Stewart, and argues that while he hoped all four would emulate the exceptional case of female rule in Israel by Deborah and Huldah (elevated by special dispensation of God to proclaim his word), they all failed to meet his expectations.
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Newman, Christine M. “The Reformation and Elizabeth Bowes: A Study of a Sixteenth-Century Northern Gentlewoman.” In Women and the Church. Edited by W. J. Sheils and Diana Wood, 325–333. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990.
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This short piece assesses Elizabeth Bowes in her own right as an example of an English gentlewoman participating in the Reformation, rather than merely as Knox’s correspondent.
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Shephard, Amanda. Gender and Authority in Sixteenth-Century England: The Knox Debate. Keele, UK: Keele University Press, 1994.
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Makes a thematic analysis of the First Blast alongside five other works by other Scottish and English authors on the issue of female rule (“gynecocracy”), including works by John Aylmer and John Leslie. Shephard concludes that Knox was extreme in his views, even among his contemporaries.
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Walton, Kristen P. Catholic Queen, Protestant Patriarchy: Mary Queen of Scots and the Politics of Gender. Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
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Walton counters the interpretation of Mary as weak and ineffectual; the central premise of this work is that Mary was as successful a queen as she could be within the confines placed upon her by 16th-century gender expectations. Knox features heavily throughout.
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Wormald, Jenny. “Godly Reformer, Godless Monarch: John Knox and Mary, Queen of Scots.” In John Knox and the British Reformations. Edited by Roger Mason, 220–241. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1998.
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Wormald punctures the idea that the interviews between Knox and Mary have any real significance. She argues that Knox largely dramatized the portrayals of himself and the queen as a form of self-aggrandizement because he could not accept (as the Protestant nobility quickly did) a Catholic queen as head of a “godly” kingdom.