Page:Great Men and Famous Women Volume 3.djvu/218

 144 STATESMEN AND SAGES JOHN KNOX BY P. HUME BROWN (1505-1572) Kxox, the great Scottish Reformer, was born at Giffordgate, a suburb of the town of Haddington, in 1505, the year preceding the birth of his famous countryman, George Buchanan. Knox has himself told us in a single sentence all that is definitely known of his family connections : " My lord," he represents himself as saying to the notorious Earl of Bothwell, " my grandfather, grandsire (maternal grandfather), and father have served under your lordship's predecessors, and some of them have died under their standards." He re- ceived the elements of his education in the gram- mar school of his native town, and in 1522 was sent to the University of Glasgow. St. Andrews was nearer his home, and possessed the more fa- mous university ; but he was probably drawn to Glasgow by the fame of the most distinguished literary Scotchman of his generation John Major, the schoolman, For this reason, at least, Buchanan was sent to St. Andrews, though Glasgow was nearer his native place, when Major had migrated to the former university, At Glasgow, under Major, Knox could have been subjected to none of the influ ences of the great intellectual revolution which substituted for the studies and methods of mediasvalism the ideas of the Revival of Letters. Like all his edu cated contemporaries, he learned to speak and write Latin with perfect fluency but it was always with an idiom that showed he had none cf the humanist'j scruples regarding purity of language. What he learned from Major was the art for which that scholar was renowned throughout Europe the art of logical ex ercitation ; and Knox's writings everywhere show that all through life he had a natural delight in the play of dialectic. He left the university without taking the degree of master of arts, thus by the conditions of all the mediaeval univer- sities precluding himself from the career of an academic teacher. During the eighteen years that follow his leaving the university, Knox passes completely out of sight. All that is known of him during this period is that from 1540 to 1543, he acted as notary in his native town of Haddington. As in the documents that establish this fact his name appears with the addition of " Sir," the title of priests who were not Masters of Arts, Knox must have been in orders in the Church of Rome till as late as 1543. In 1544 we find him acting as tutor to the sons of Douglas of Lorgniddry and Cockburn of Ormiston families, it is