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This chapter describes Knox's experiences in Geneva, where he had found himself at a spiritual crossroads, given the recent developments regarding his English and Scottish flocks. Consequently, he experienced a type of double vision as he watched the different situations unfold and did not know which way he was called to go. Feeling isolated and embattled once again he took up his pen, writing a number of works and completing his most famous tract, The First Blast of the Trumpet. Radicalized by the English persecution in particular, Knox had chosen in that work to present arguments against female rule. Under the same pressure, his ministerial colleague Goodman in a separate tract had explicitly called for resistance to the regime of Mary Tudor. Their joint stance symbolized their close friendship, and for the remainder of his days Knox relied upon the support of his “beloved brother”.

This chapter reveals the “hidden years” of Knox's life, specifically the years between 1565 and 1567, in which Knox had entered into a self-imposed internal exile and encountered Goodman once more during his journey to England. There, he found himself embroiled in the vestments controversy and came into contact with early separatists in London. However, his withdrawal in 1565 from his previous style of political engagement had placed much greater stress upon the spiritual weapons of preaching, penitence, and prayer. As one disaster followed another during that year, Knox lost his decisiveness and slid into doubt and desperation. He was a passive observer during the dramatic crises that ended Mary's personal rule in Scotland and yet spent much of his time writing his History to explain to Scots the meaning of their recent history. Its vision of the covenanted kingdom had a lasting impact upon Scottish identity.

This chapter revisits the story of the dispute at Frankfurt via insights revealed through the Goodman papers. This dispute, which had affected the Church of England, re-emerged in Queen Elizabeth's reign and it had helped to determine the nature both of the Protestant Kirk that was to appear in Scotland and down the centuries of the Reformed tradition, throughout the Anglophone world. Perhaps it came as no surprise that, when he was minister to the English-speaking exile congregation at Frankfurt, Knox experienced some of the toughest and most bruising encounters of his life. Frankfurt changed him, and his battles there altered the entire English exile community and sent him into a third exile.

This introductory chapter places John Knox at his newborn son's baptism in Geneva, on 23 May 1557. He named his son Nathaniel, which in Hebrew translates to “gift from God”. Already, this scene challenges the traditional assumption of Knox as the personification of the puritanical kill-joy who championed the strictest Presbyterian tenets on all issues and delighted in haranguing Mary, Queen of Scots. Instead, he behaves as an ordinary family man, enjoying the company of others amid celebration, pointedly not preaching doom or misogynist tenets, as popular misconception would have one believe. This chapter also introduces yet another rare and wonderful gift, in the form of the manuscript papers from Knox's best friend, Christopher Goodman. These documents provide fresh insight into the life and works of John Knox, adding new dimensions to his character, which will be further illuminated in succeeding chapters.

This chapter discusses how the revolutionary tracts penned by Knox and Goodman drove their congregation to utilize to the full their time in exile. The great missionary endeavour of Calvin and his fellow Frenchmen to sustain the Protestant cause in France helped the English-speaking exiles to find their own purpose. The congregation saw their mission as preparing for the future in the British Isles and witnessing the present. They became a working model of a Reformed community embodied in Word, sacraments, and discipline resting upon a strong spiritual core. In a remarkable undertaking, they produced a community of texts—the Geneva Bible, the metrical psalter and their new liturgy. The “example of Geneva” which they created with the help of their zealous congregation became the model for everything Knox subsequently did.

This chapter narrates Knox's third exile—this time to Geneva, with his wife Marjorie Bowes and her mother. During this time, Knox carried with him a new weight of expectation that he would help to lead the Scottish Protestants out of the “Egypt” of Catholicism. Meanwhile, his Frankfurt supporters had set up a new exile church in Geneva, and in his absence, he was elected their minister alongside Christopher Goodman. When his new household arrived in Geneva they encountered the warmest of welcomes. Despite having plenty of new cares and concerns, such as the conflict surrounding John Calvin and the religious exiles, Knox here entered the happiest period of his life. He was a husband and became a father and he formed the special ministerial partnership with Goodman that made them a formidable and long-lasting team.