Knox, John, approximately 1514-1572; Reformation -- Scotland
He next travelled in Germany, where a Jew, on a Rhine boat, inspired or
increased his aversion to works of sacred art, as being "idolatrous."
About 1542-43 he was reading with pupils at Cambridge, and was remarked
for the severity of his ascetic virtue, and for his great charity. At
some uncertain date he translated the Helvetic Confession of Faith, and
he was more of a Calvinist than a Lutheran. In July 1543 he returned to
Scotland; at least he returned with some "commissioners to England," who
certainly came home in July 1543, as Knox mentions, though later he gives
the date of Wishart's return in 1544, probably by a slip of the pen.
Coming home in July 1543, Wishart would expect a fair chance of preaching
his novel ideas, as peace between Scotland and Protestant England now
seemed secure, and Arran, the Scottish Regent, the chief of the almost
Royal House of Hamilton, was, for the moment, himself a Protestant. For
five days (August 28-September 3, 1543) the great Cardinal Beaton, the
head of the party of the Church, was outlawed, and Wishart's preaching at
Dundee, about that date, is supposed by some {15b} to have stimulated an
attack then made on the monasteries in the town. But Arran suddenly
recanted, deserted the Protestants and the faction attached to England,
and joined forces with Cardinal Beaton, who, in November 1543, visited
Dundee, and imprisoned the ringleaders in the riots. They are called
"the honestest men in the town," by the treble traitor and rascal,
Crichton, laird of Brunston in Lothian, at this time a secret agent of
Sadleir, the envoy of Henry VIII. (November 25, 1543).
By April 1544, Henry was preparing to invade Scotland, and the "earnest
professors" of Protestant doctrines in Scotland sent to him "a Scottish
man called Wysshert," with a proposal for the kidnapping or murder of
Cardinal Beaton. Brunston and other Scottish lairds of Wishart's circle
were agents of the plot, and in 1545-46 our George Wishart is found
companioning with them. When Cassilis took up the threads of the plot
against Beaton, it was to Cassilis's country in Ayrshire that Wishart
went and there preached. Thence he returned to Dundee, to fight the
plague and comfort the citizens, and, towards the end of 1545, moved to
Lothian, expecting to be joined there by his westland supporters, led by
Cassilis--but entertaining dark forebodings of his doom.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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