John Knox Returns to Scotland

1559

The reformer John Knox, exiled preacher and scourge of queens, stepped off a ship at Leith and launched a preaching tour that would ignite the Scottish Reformation within a year. Mary of Guise, regent of Scotland, wrote her daughter in France that the preachers were stirring up dangerous fires. His confrontation with Mary Queen of Scots, reducing the young queen to tears, became one of the Reformation era's defining encounters.