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John Knox, engraving from Icones, by T. Beza, 1580. (credit: Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, J.R. Freeman & Co. Ltd.)

(born c. 1514, near Haddington, East Lothian, Scot. — died Nov. 24, 1572, Edinburgh) Scottish clergyman, leader of the Scottish Reformation and founder of Scottish Presbyterianism. Probably trained for the priesthood at the University of St. Andrews, he was ordained in 1540. He joined a group of Protestants who fortified St. Andrews Castle, but they were captured by French Catholics and carried away into slavery in 1547. Released through English intervention in 1549, he spent four years preaching in England, where he influenced developments in the Church of England. With the accession of the Catholic Mary I, he fled to the Continent. He served as pastor at Frankfurt am Main and Geneva until his return to Scotland in 1559. In England, Elizabeth I made common cause with the Scottish Presbyterians, lest the French gain control of Scotland to support its Catholic monarch, Mary, Queen of Scots. Knox survived conflicts with Mary and spent the rest of his life in setting up the Presbyterian church.

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