ABSTRACT
Practical ecclesioiogy is equally the key to John Knox's radical nonconformity. Knox's 'sisteris in Edinburgh', whose consciences were troubled by fashion, were told that 'the garmentis of wemen do declair their weaknes and unabilitie to execute the offices of men'. More than the letters to individual women, the famous correspondences with Mrs Bowes and Mrs Locke, Knox's pastoral epistles to pairs and undifferentiated groups of 'sisters' suggest a particular penchant for a ministry among women. Gordon Donaldson suggested that Knox's refusal of the bishopric of Rochester had less to do with a principled prejudice against Episcopacy than with Knox's realistic gift of second sight, his 'foresight of troubles to come'. In 1583, Field and the printer Robert Waldegrave, later to serve as king's printer in Scotland, published a little treatise by Knox on the temptations of Christ, 'written for the comfort of certaine private friends, but nowe published in print for the benefit of all that fear God'.
