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 Giffordgate, now part of Haddington in East Lothian, was the birthplace of John Knox, the resolutely Puritan pastor who, from 1546 onwards, staunchly
supported and ultimately led the reformation movement in Scotland. Condemned by opponents as a trouble maker and kill-yoy, this fiery preacher with a consuming sense of mission was probably educated at St. Andrews.
When, in 1547, his mentor there, George Wishart, was burnt at the stake fore heresy, Knox's voice was among the loudest raised in protest against the
prosecutor, Cardinal David Beaton, champion of the Franco-Scottish alliance and himself later lynched by a Protestant mob. When the revolt was crushed Knox was
taken prisoner, serving 19 months on a French galley. Following his release he spent some time in Berwick, Newcastle and London as a chaplain to Edward VI. But when the Catholic
Queen Mary I came to the throne in 1554, he was forced to flee, escaping to Switzerland. By now almost 50 years old, Knox made his way to Geneva where he immersed himself in
Calvinism. His return to Scotland in May 1559 was marked by a wave of iconoclastic violence before Calvinism was adapted as the established religion of Scotland by the
"Reform Parliament". After 1560 Knox became minister of St.Giles Cathedral in Edinburgh from the pulpit of which, in the course of an extended battle of wills with Mary Stuart, he
delivered impassioned sermons against the papists, in which he set down proposals for a nationwide system of education aimed at universal literacy. The largely autobiographical
"History of the Reformation of Scotland" appeared between 1559 and 1564. Knox was twice married, first to Marjory Bowers, an Englishwoman, and second to
Margaret Stuart, daughter of Lord Ochiltree. the house on Edinburgh's Royal Mile where he is said to have lived is now a museum dedicated to the life and work of this pugnacious reformer. John Knox 1513 - 1572
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