CHAPTER II: KNOX, WISHART, AND THE MURDER OF BEATON: 1545-1546


Our earliest knowledge of Knox, apart from mention of him in notarial
documents, is derived from his own History of the Reformation. The
portion of that work in which he first mentions himself was written about
1561-66, some twenty years after the events recorded, and in reading all
this part of his Memoirs, and his account of the religious struggle,
allowance must be made for errors of memory, or for erroneous
information. We meet him first towards the end of "the holy days of
Yule"--Christmas, 1545. Knox had then for some weeks been the constant
companion and armed bodyguard of George Wishart, who was calling himself
"the messenger of the Eternal God," and preaching the new ideas in
Haddington to very small congregations. This Wishart, Knox's master in
the faith, was a Forfarshire man; he is said to have taught Greek at
Montrose, to have been driven thence in 1538 by the Bishop of Brechin,
and to have recanted certain heresies in 1539. He had denied the merits
of Christ as the Redeemer, but afterwards dropped that error, when
persistence meant death at the stake. It was in Bristol that he "burned
his faggot," in place of being burned himself. There was really nothing
humiliating in this recantation, for, after his release, he did not
resume his heresy; clearly he yielded, not to fear, but to conviction of
theological error. {15a}

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