If Knox was born in 1513-15, he must have taken priest’s orders, and adopted the profession of a notary, at nearly the earliest moment which the canonical law permitted.  No man ought to be in priest’s orders before he was twenty-five; Knox, if born in 1515, was just twenty-five in 1540, when he is styled “Sir John Knox” (one of “The Pope’s Knights”) in legal documents, and appears as a notary. {5} He certainly continued in orders and in the notarial profession as late as March 1543.  The law of the Church did not, in fact, permit priests to be notaries, but in an age when “notaires” were often professional forgers, the additional security for character yielded by Holy Orders must have been welcome to clients, and Bishops permitted priests to practise this branch of the law.

Of Knox’s near kin no more is known than of his ancestors.  He had a brother, William, for whom, in 1552, he procured a licence to trade in England as owner of a ship of 100 tons.  Even as late as 1656, there were not a dozen ships of this burden in Scotland, so William Knox must have been relatively a prosperous man.  In 1544-45, there was a William Knox, a fowler or gamekeeper to the Earl of Westmoreland, who acted as a secret agent between the Scots in English pay and their paymasters.  We much later (1559) find the Reformer’s brother, William, engaged with him in a secret political mission to the Governor of Berwick; probably this William knew shy Border paths, and he may have learned them as the Lord Westmoreland’s fowler in earlier years.

About John Knox’s early years and education nothing is known.  He certainly acquired such Latin (satis humilis, says a German critic) as Scotland then had to teach; probably at the Burgh School of Haddington.  A certain John Knox matriculated at the University of Glasgow in 1522, but he cannot have been the Reformer, if the Reformer was not born till 1513- 15.  Beza, on the other hand (1580), had learned, probably from the Reformer, whom he knew well, that Knox was a St. Andrews man, and though his name does not occur in the University Register, the Register was very ill kept.  Supposing Knox, then, to have been born in 1513-15, and to have been educated at St. Andrews, we can see how he comes to know so much about the progress of the new religious ideas at that University, between 1529 and 1535.  “The Well of St. Leonard’s College” was a notorious fountain of heresies, under Gawain Logie, the Principal.  Knox very probably heard the sermons of the Dominicans and Franciscans “against the pride and idle life of bishops,” and other abuses.  He speaks of a private conversation between Friar Airth and Major (about 1534), and names some of the persons present at a sermon in the parish church of St. Andrews, as if he had himself been in the congregation.  He gives the text and heads of the discourse, including “merry tales” told by the Friar. {6} If Knox heard the sermons and stories of clerical scandals at St. Andrews, they did not prevent him from taking orders.  His Greek and Hebrew, what there was of them, Knox must have acquired in later life, at least we never learn that he was taught by the famous George Wishart, who, about that time, gave Greek lectures at Montrose.