John Knox statue, Knox Place

Image: © kim traynor Taken: 13 Apr 2011

Statue of Scotland's leading reformer at the time of the Protestant Reformation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Knox Haddington is traditionally accepted as his birthplace, linked to a house in the Giffordgate, although for some the nearby village of Gifford has a rival claim. "No grander figure can be found, in the entire history of the Reformation in this island, than that of Knox. (...) The time has come when English history may do justice to one but for whom the Reformation would have been overthrown among ourselves; for the spirit which Knox created saved Scotland; and if Scotland had been Catholic again, neither the wisdom of Elizabeth's Ministers, nor the teaching of her Bishops, nor her own chicaneries, would have preserved England from revolution. His was the voice which taught the peasant of the Lothians that he was a free man, the equal in the sight of God with the proudest peer or prelate that had trampled on his forefathers. He was the one antagonist whom Mary Stuart could not soften nor Maitland [her Secretary] deceive; he it was that raised the poor Commons of his country into a stern and rugged people, who might be hard, narrow, superstitious and fanatical, but who, nevertheless, were men whom neither king, noble, nor priest could force again to submit to tyranny." -- a Victorian view of Knox from Froude's History Of England, 1850-70

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