he to some extent gratified when he went to the continent. He also studied law, and the next clearly ascertained fact in his life is that he acted as a notary in Haddington and the neighbourhood. In his writings he more than once cites the Pandects. He appears as procurator for James Ker in Samuelston, a village about three miles from Haddington, at the market-cross of that burgh, on 13 Dec. 1540; as umpire, along with James Ker, in a dispute on 21 Nov. 1542 as witness to a deed concerning Rannelton, Berwickshire, in a Haddington protocol book, 28 March 1543; and as the notary who wrote a notarial instrument on 27 March 1543, still extant among the Earl of Haddington's papers at Tynninghame. In the earliest of these documents he is designed ‘Schir John Knox,’ and in the notarial instrument he designs himself ‘Johannis Knox sacri altaris minister sancte Andreæ diocesis authoritate apostolica notarius.’ These designations prove that he had been admitted to minor orders (Knox, Works, i. 555). He used as his motto as notary ‘Non falsum testimonium perhibeo,’ and as witness ‘Per Christum fidelis cui gloria Amen.’ He may have served at the chapel of St. Nicholas at Samuelston, but he held no cure, and in the preface to his sermon published in 1566 he dates his study of the scriptures as commencing within twenty years. A Romanist contemporary, Archibald Hamilton, alleged within five years of his death that, ‘although very illiterate, he contrived to be made a presbyter, and employed himself in teaching in private houses to young people the rudiments of the vulgar tongue’ (De Confessione Calvinianæ Sectæ apud Scotos, fol. 64, Paris, 1577–8). Between 1523 and 1544 the record of his life is blank. From 1544 we follow his life in the pages of his ‘History,’ which is largely an autobiography. It is truthful and substantially accurate, except as to dates, but vehement and prejudiced, and requiring to be checked by contemporary writings.
Rejecting the career of a priest, which his adoption of the principles of the reformers made impossible, and abandoning that of a notary, which can scarcely have been more congenial, he adopted, perhaps earlier, but certainly in 1544, the vocation of a tutor. His pupils were Francis and John, sons of Hugh Douglas of Longniddry, near Tranent in East Lothian, and Alexander Cockburn, eldest son of the Laird of Ormiston, boys about twelve years of age. Their studies were grammar, the Latin classics (Humanæ Literæ), the catechism, and the gospel of St. John. It was while thus engaged that George Wishart [q. v.], a champion of Lutheran doctrines, came to Lothian to escape the persecution of Cardinal Beaton. He had friends among the gentry of that shire, and the fathers of Knox's pupils, Douglas and Cockburn and Crichton of Brunston, gave him an asylum in their houses. Knox was constantly with him in Lothian, and accompanied him before 1546 to Haddington, where Wishart preached on two days in succession, 15 and 16 Jan. of that year. After the second sermon, whose invective shows the model on which Knox formed his own style, Wishart bade Knox go back to Longniddry. The same evening, 16 Jan., Wishart was seized at Ormiston by Bothwell, and was burnt at St. Andrews for heresy on 1 March. On 29 May Cardinal Beaton was murdered in revenge for Wishart's death [see Leslie, Norman]. The participators in the deed shut themselves up in the castle of St. Andrews, and, having opened communication by sea with England, held it in spite of a siege. Knox had intended about this time to visit the German universities to avoid persecution. He approved, though he had no hand in, the cardinal's murder, which he calls ‘the godly act of James Melvine,’ in a marginal note to his ‘History,’ and at Easter, 10 April 1547, he was persuaded by the fathers of his pupils to go with them to the castle of St. Andrews. In the chapel of the castle he continued to teach them the gospel of St. John, beginning where he left off at Longniddry, and after the siege was raised he catechised them publicly in the parish kirk. The leaders of the party in the castle, and especially John Rough [q. v.], a preacher, Henry Balnaves, a lawyer, and Sir David Lyndsay [q. v.], the poet, seeing his ability, urged him to assume the office of preacher. He refused, as he had not received a call. This was speedily supplied. Rough, after a sermon on the election of ministers, charged Knox, ‘in the name of God and Christ, and of those that presently call you by my mouth, not to refuse this holy vocation.’ The congregation publicly expressed their approval. The call was irregular, but it asserted for the first time in Scotland the claim of the congregation to choose their spiritual guide. Knox accepted it, and on the next Sunday, appointed for his sermon, preached from a text in the seventh chapter of Daniel upon the corruption of the papacy, as seen in the lives of the popes and the bishops. He ended with a challenge to his old master, John Major, or any of his hearers, to dispute his conclusions. The challenge was accepted, and a conference held in ‘the yards of St. Leonard's.’ Certain theses drawn from Knox's sermon were proposed for debate, such as that ‘the pope is ane antichrist,’ that ‘the sacraments of the New
