Even after four centuries, when lesser personalities and greater theologians have disappeared from accounts of the Reformation, the name and figure of the Scottish historian and religious organizer John Knox have remained in the popular imagination. Schools, churches, and seminaries bearing his name--especially in countries where successive waves of Scottish immigrants have shaped religious institutions and cultural values--are testimonies to his forceful personality, and their power in celebrating an almost mythic name has been augmented by scholarly accounts of his reforming efforts on an international scale--in England, France, and chiefly Scotland. His infamous First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women (1558) has also guaranteed him a place in the vanguard of those prepared to be incautiously bold or imprudent on behalf of the Reformed religion in the sixteenth century. The subsequent anger of Elizabeth I no doubt magnified its object, who kept up a vituperative...