John Knox’s Travels
From East Lothian to St. Andrews, the French galleys, the pulpits of England, the exile congregations of Frankfurt and Geneva, and home to Scotland. Follow 23 moments in Knox’s life, c. 1514–1572, and explore what the evidence does—and does not—tell us.
Confidence describes the location or episode, not every date or street address. Date ranges overlap; visits and events within a longer residence are numbered separately.
Select a number to read its story. Hover or focus for a label. On small screens, swipe the map sideways; selecting a stop brings it into view.
Reading the map: numbered callouts point to approximate locations. Lines show chronological connections, not verified travel routes; dashed lines involve probable or uncertain stops. Repeat visits share an anchor. Scotland and the English border are enlarged in an inset. The illustrated base map is schematic.
The chronological itinerary
Follow the numbered stops, or select any heading to locate it on the map.
-
01Haddington · East Lothian
A birth he called “base”
Knox was born at or near Haddington, a market town about fifteen miles east of Edinburgh. His father and both grandfathers had served the Earls of Bothwell. He called his beginnings “base,” and was proud rather than ashamed of them.
Documentation: The year is uncertain. Older writers gave 1505; most modern accounts prefer about 1514. Tradition places the house in the Giffordgate, across the Tyne from the town.
Sources: Christian History · Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
02St. Andrews · Patrick Hamilton
The first martyr of the Scottish Reformation
Patrick Hamilton, a young nobleman who had studied at Wittenberg and Marburg, was burned before St. Salvator’s College. A contemporary warned the bishops that “the reek of Master Patrick Hamilton has infected as many as it blew upon.”
Documentation: The burning is certain. Knox’s presence as a bystander is a later tradition; he would have been about fourteen, and no contemporary source places him there.
Sources: Knox · Knox Timeline.
-
03St. Andrews · university
A student of John Major
Knox studied theology under the scholastic John Major and was ordained a priest, probably about 1536.
Documentation: Major taught at both Glasgow and St. Andrews, and Knox’s university has been placed at each. No record of his graduation survives.
Sources: Christian History · Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
04East Lothian · notary and tutor
A priest earning his bread
Knox worked as a notary under papal authority in the diocese of St. Andrews and became tutor to the sons of East Lothian lairds. Notarial documents in his hand survive from these years.
Sources: Christian History · Beza’s Icones.
-
05East Lothian · Wishart’s bodyguard
“One is sufficient for a sacrifice”
George Wishart, who had brought the Reformed faith home from Switzerland, preached through East Lothian, and Knox carried a two-handed sword before him. On the night of the arrest Wishart sent him back to his pupils: “One is sufficient for a sacrifice.” Wishart was burned at St. Andrews on March 1, 1546.
Sources: Knox · Christian History · Knox Timeline.
-
06St. Andrews Castle · the call to preach
Called by a congregation
After Cardinal Beaton’s murder, Knox and his pupils took refuge in the castle held by the Protestant lairds. John Rough publicly charged him to take up the office of preacher. Knox burst into tears and withdrew, but at length preached from Daniel 7, and his hearers said that others had lopped the branches but he struck at the root.
Sources: Knox · Christian History · Knox Timeline.
-
07The French galleys · Rouen and the Loire
Nineteen months at the oar
The castle surrendered to a French fleet at the end of July 1547, and Knox was sent to row as a galley slave. The galleys lay at Rouen and wintered on the Loire near Nantes. Off the Scottish coast in 1548, very sick, he saw the steeple of St. Andrews and said he would not die until he had preached there again.
Documentation: The galley service is certain. The marker stands for the French coastal waters where the galleys lay; the exact stations are reconstructed from Knox’s History.
Sources: Knox · Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
08Berwick-upon-Tweed
Preacher on the border
Released early in 1549 through English intervention, Knox was appointed preacher at Berwick. Here he met Elizabeth Bowes and her daughter Marjory, later his wife.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
09Newcastle · St. Nicholas
A larger pulpit
Knox moved to St. Nicholas’ Church, Newcastle, and was named one of the chaplains of Edward VI.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
10London · the royal court
The “black rubric”
Preaching at court, Knox objected to kneeling at Communion in the Second Prayer Book. The result was the declaration later called the “black rubric,” that kneeling implied no adoration of a bodily presence. He declined the bishopric of Rochester.
Sources: Christian History · Beza’s Icones.
-
11Dieppe · flight from Mary Tudor
Leaving England
Edward VI died in July 1553, and Mary Tudor restored the Roman faith. After some months in hiding Knox crossed to Dieppe early in 1554.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
12Geneva · first visit
Questions for Calvin
Knox went to Geneva and laid before Calvin his questions about the duty of subjects to an idolatrous ruler.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Christian History · Knox Timeline.
-
13Zurich · Bullinger
The same questions in Zurich
Calvin sent him on to Heinrich Bullinger at Zurich with the same questions. Both counseled caution.
Sources: Beza’s Icones.
-
14Frankfurt · the English exiles
Troubles over the Prayer Book
The English exiles at Frankfurt called Knox as their minister. A party loyal to the English Prayer Book opposed his simpler order of worship, and in March 1555 he was forced to leave the city.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Christian History · Knox Timeline.
-
15Berwick and Edinburgh · a return
Marriage and a preaching tour
After a brief return to Geneva, Knox came back through Berwick, married Marjory Bowes, and preached privately in Edinburgh and through the southwest of Scotland. Summoned to answer before the bishops, he found the summons dropped. He left for Geneva in July 1556 and was burned in effigy at Edinburgh.
Documentation: The date of the marriage is uncertain; proposals run from 1553 to 1556.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
16Geneva · the English congregation
“The most perfect school of Christ”
Knox pastored the English-speaking congregation in Geneva and called Calvin’s city “the most perfect school of Christ that was ever on earth since the days of the apostles.” In 1558 he published The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, aimed at Mary Tudor.
Members of his congregation were at work on the Geneva Bible, whose complete edition appeared in 1560.
Sources: Christian History · Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
17Dieppe · waiting for passage
A pastor for a waiting church
Knox waited at Dieppe for leave to travel through England. Elizabeth, now queen, refused it because of the First Blast. Meanwhile he served the Reformed congregation there until it received its own pastor.
Documentation: Knox had also come to Dieppe in October 1557, intending to go home, and turned back.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Knox Timeline.
-
18Perth · the sermon against idolatry
The Reformation breaks open
Knox landed at Leith on May 2, 1559. Within days he preached at Perth against idolatry, and when the sermon was over a crowd destroyed the altars and images and sacked the friaries.
Sources: Knox · Christian History.
-
19Edinburgh · St. Giles’ and the Parliament
The Scots Confession
Knox became minister of St. Giles’. Mary of Guise died on June 11, 1560, and that August the Parliament adopted the Scots Confession, which Knox and five colleagues named John had drawn up in four days, abolished the Mass, and repudiated the pope’s authority. The First Book of Discipline followed, with its plans for schools in every parish and for the relief of the poor.
Sources: Christian History · Knox · Knox Timeline.
-
20Edinburgh · Holyrood
Before the queen
Mary, Queen of Scots, returned from France in August 1561 and had Mass said in her chapel. In the first of several interviews at Holyrood Knox would not soften his words. “The mass is invented by the brain of man,” he held, “without any commandment of God; therefore it is idolatry.”
Sources: Knox · Christian History · Knox Timeline.
-
21Stirling · a coronation sermon
Preaching at the crowning of James VI
Mary was forced to abdicate, and her infant son was crowned James VI at Stirling. Knox preached the sermon. James would later also become James I of England and give his name to the Authorized Version.
Sources: Knox Timeline · Beza’s Icones.
-
22St. Andrews · the last retreat
Still preaching with a dead hand
With Edinburgh held by the queen’s party, Knox withdrew to St. Andrews. A stroke had left him so weak that he signed his letters “with my dead hand,” yet a student who heard him there said that before the sermon was done he was so active he seemed ready to break the pulpit in pieces.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Beeke and Kleyn.
-
23Edinburgh · Knox’s death
“Where I cast my first anchor”
Knox returned to Edinburgh, preached his last sermon on November 9, and died on November 24, 1572, after asking to hear 1 Corinthians 15 and John 17, “where I cast my first anchor.” At his burial the Earl of Morton said, “Here lies a man who in his life never feared nor flattered any flesh.”
Documentation: The story of the musket ball that struck his candlestick instead of him is told of these last months; it rests on later accounts.
Sources: Beza’s Icones · Beeke and Kleyn · Knox Timeline.
Sources
Knox’s own History of the Reformation in Scotland is the chief witness to his life, but it says little about his first thirty years. His birth year, his university, and his presence at Patrick Hamilton’s burning are all argued. Each entry identifies the accounts behind its reconstruction.
- John Knox, History of the Reformation in Scotland. Knox’s own narrative; Wishart, the call at St. Andrews, the galleys, Perth, the Parliament of 1560, and the interviews with Queen Mary.
- Christian History 46 (1995), “John Knox & the Scottish Reformation.” On Knox’s birth, schooling, call to preach, the English years, Geneva, and the settlement of 1560.
- C. G. M’Crie, ed., Beza’s “Icones”: Contemporary Portraits of Reformers of Religion and Letters. The editor’s biographical sketch of Knox; the galleys, England, Frankfurt, Geneva, and his last days.
- Joel R. Beeke and Diana Kleyn, Reformation Heroes. On Knox’s ministry and his funeral.
- Reformation Stewards, John Knox Timeline. The site’s own chronology, on which these stops are built.