John Knox

John Knox was a Scottish priest turned bodyguard turned preacher when a French fleet took the castle at St Andrews in 1547 and sent him to the galleys. He spent nineteen months chained to an oar, and never afterward feared much. Freed, he preached in England under Edward VI, fled to the continent when Mary I took the throne, and in Geneva found in Calvin's city what he called the most perfect school of Christ since the apostles.

He returned to Scotland in 1559 and preached the country into a reformation: within a year Parliament had adopted a confession of faith he helped write, and a plan for a school in every parish and care for the poor. His arguments with the young Catholic queen, Mary Stuart, are famous — she wept, he did not yield. He was a hard man in a hard fight, and some of what he published about women rulers embarrassed even his allies; but Scotland's Presbyterian church, and its stubborn commitment to educating every child, grew out of his work.