More than Writers

As I’ve been saying in previous blogs, C. S. Lewis in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century displays a wonderful balance of critical analysis and sympathetic insight. He brings out for us the strengths of the era, so that we may profit from them, while not hiding their dark side—a side that is unfortunately quite familiar today. John Knox is one of the most important, and most colourful, figures of the Reformation in the British Isles (especially for Scots). Having been brought up a Northern Ireland Presbyterian, Lewis was well placed to understand Knox’s faith from the inside. Soon after Mary’s accession in 1553, Knox fled from England, where he was already in exile, to the Continent. From there he wrote the Epistle to His Afflicted Brethren in England , ‘full’, Lewis tells us, ‘of his exulting certainty that the persecutors will be punished in this life and in the next’. Lewis comments ‘it is impossible to suppress the uneasy remembrance ( even though we dare make...

If you’ve read C. S. Lewis’s Pilgrim’s Regress , you’ll know that the Northern Irish Presbyterianism of his childhood was rather forbidding. Now, pretty much the main founding father of Scottish Presbyterianism was, of course, John Knox (1513–1572). When Lewis comes to discuss John Knox in English Literature in the Sixteenth Century , he gives Knox a very fair hearing: showing as always his ability to set aside his own preferences and imagine his way into the minds of writers in the past, even ones with whom he might not entirely sympathize. Knox is so interesting that I think I shall need two blogs for him. Let’s start, then, with a list of six little known facts about Knox. 1. Knox is famous for writing The First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstruous Regiment of Women . I hope it’s not  a little known fact that monstruous (yes, with a U in the middle) means ‘contrary to the natural order’ and regiment means ‘the action of ruling over other people’: so it does...