This Episode is titled, Knox, Knox, Who’s There?John Knox was born in 1514 in the small burgh of Haddington, south of Edinburgh. At the age of 15 he entered the University of St. Andrews to study, not golf, but theology. After 7 yrs he was ordained a Roman Catholic priest and became a notary since his studies specialized in the Law. Being a gifted speaker, he was employed as a tutor for the sons of some local lairds, a term referring to lower rung of Scottish nobility.Dramatic events unfolded in Scotland during Knox’s youth. Many were angry with the Roman church which owned more than half the land and gathered an annual income of almost 20 times that of the crown. Bishops and priests were more often than not political appointments, and many so morally corrupt, they didn’t even try to hide their debaucheries. Cardinal Beaton, archbishop of St. Andrews, openly consorted with concubines, fathering ten children.The constant traffic between Scotland and Europe saw much Protestant literature smuggled into the country. Church authorities were alarmed by the pernicious German “heresy” as they labeled it and tried to suppress it. Patrick Hamilton, an outspoken Protestant convert, was burned at the stake in 1528.In the early 1540s, while tutoring the sons of Protestant families, Knox came under their influence, and at the preaching of Thomas Guilliame, joined them. Knox then became a bodyguard for the firebrand Protestant preacher George Wishart, at that time touring Scotland.In 1546, Cardinal Beaton had Wishart arrested, tried, strangled, and just to make sure everyone knew how mad he was, Wishart’s body was burned. The Protestants decided such outrage would not go unanswered. So sixteen Protestant nobles stormed the castle, assassinated Beaton, and mutilated his body in retribution for what he’d done to Wishart, who posthumously could wonder where they’d been earlier. Might have been a little smarter for them to take the castle when he was still a prisoner. Oh well.With the castle now in Protestant hands, a fleet of French ships arrived and laid in a siege. Catholic France was an ally to Catholic Scotland. Though Knox was not party to the Cardinal’s murder, he did approve of the action, and during a break in the siege, joined the besieged inside the castle to show solidarity.This siege wasn’t your typical surrounding of a castle where the attackers try to starve the besieged into submission. It was a half-hearted, partial siege, more about appearances than an earnest attempt to bring the Cardinal’s killers to justice. So, life wasn’t disrupted for the people in the castle all that much. Things went on pretty much as normal.Then, during a church service one Sunday, Protestant preacher John Rough spoke on the election of ministers, turned to John Knox and asked if he’d please take on the office of resident preacher. When the congregation confirmed the call, Knox was overwhelmed and reduced to tears. At first he declined, thinking himself unqualified, but eventually submitted to what he quickly realized was the call of God. It was a short-lived ministry. In 1547, the siege of St. Andrews Castle was laid on in earnest and the Protestants had to surrender. Some were imprisoned while others like Knox were made galley-slaves. Which, if you know anything about that, sends a shiver up your spine. You’d be hard pressed to find a lower lot for a man to sink to. An ironic post for a man who’d just wept in humility at being called to pastor a church.A year and a half passed before Knox and his fellow galley-slaves were released. That they lived a year and a half is a miracle in itself. Knox spent the next five yrs in England, and his reputation for preaching boomed. When the Catholic Queen Mary Tudor inherited the throne from her brother Edward VI in Oct 1553, Knox fled to France.  Smart move, since Mary did her best to reverse the path toward Protestantism her brother had followed. She executed so many she’s k