SOURCE: "John Knox and Revolution, 1558," in History Today, Vol. VIII, No. 8, August, 1958, pp. 56573.

In the following essay, which emphasizes Knox's writings of 1558, Burns explores the motivating factors that led Knox to become openly political.

Early in 1558 John Knox returned to Geneva from Dieppe. He had gone there in the previous autumn, having been invited by four Protestant leaders to come back to Scotland and resume the successful preaching of the winter of 1555-56. But "contrary letters"—and, as he later acknowledged, certain hesitations of his own—interrupted his journey at the Channel. His final return to Scotland was delayed until May 1559. Before that he published three important pamphlets, all written in the first half of 1558: the notorious First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, the Appellation of John Knox, and the Letter to the Commonalty. In so far as Knox made history by writing...