John Knox, son of William Knox and of --- Sinclair, his wife, {2a} unlike
most Scotsmen, unlike even Mr. Carlyle, had not "an ell of pedigree." The
common scoff was that each Scot styled himself "the King's poor cousin."
But John Knox declared, "I am a man of base estate and condition." {2b}
The genealogy of Mr. Carlyle has been traced to a date behind the Norman
Conquest, but of Knox's ancestors nothing is known. He himself, in 1562,
when he "ruled the roast" in Scotland, told the ruffian Earl of Bothwell,
"my grandfather, my maternal grandfather, and my father, have served your
Lordship's predecessors, and some of them have died under their
standards; and this" (namely goodwill to the house of the feudal
superior) "is a part of the obligation of our Scottish kindness." Knox,
indeed, never writes very harshly of Bothwell, partly for the reason he
gives; partly, perhaps, because Bothwell, though an infamous character,
and a political opponent, was not in 1562-67 "an idolater," that is, a
Catholic: if ever he had been one; partly because his "History" ends
before Bothwell's murder of Darnley in 1567.

Knox's ancestors were, we may suppose, peasant farmers, like the
ancestors of Burns and Hogg; and Knox, though he married a maid of the
Queen's kin, bore traces of his descent. "A man ungrateful and
unpleasable," Northumberland styled him: he was one who could not
"smiling, put a question by"; if he had to remonstrate even with a person
whom it was desirable to conciliate, he stated his case in the plainest
and least flattering terms. "Of nature I am churlish, and in conditions
different from many," he wrote; but this side of his character he kept
mainly for people of high rank, accustomed to deference, and indifferent
or hostile to his aims. To others, especially to women whom he liked, he
was considerate and courteous, but any assertion of social superiority
aroused his wakeful independence. His countrymen of his own order had