Knox left Glasgow without taking the degree of Master of Arts, and there is no evidence whatever for the statement sometimes made that he was afterwards connected with the University of St. Andrews. In fact we lose sight of him entirely for a period of eighteen years from the time of his leaving Glasgow. During that interval he was ordained a priest, though by whom, or at what precise date, it is now impossible to determine; but his signature has been found,[3] as notary, to an instrument in the charter-room at Tyninghame, bearing date March 27, 1543, a fact which establishes that up till that time he retained his character as a priest and had the papal authority to act as a notary. With these functions he seems to have combined that of a teacher of youth, for at the time we come upon him in connection with Wishart, he had under his charge some young men of good family in the land.
We have no details concerning his conversion from the Romish to the Protestant faith. According to one authority it was Thomas Guillaume who was "the first to give Mr. Knox a taste of the truth." That eloquent preacher,--a native of East Lothian, who had risen to a high place in the order of the Dominicans,--had through the influence of the party of progress been appointed chaplain to the Regent Arran at the time when that weak ruler was favouring the Reformers. Knox himself has described him as "a man of solid judgment, reasonable letters (as for that age), and of prompt and good utterance; his doctrine was wholesome without great vehemency against superstition." It does not appear, however, from anything he says that he ever came personally into contact with him, though it is possible that some of those clear expositions of Scripture for which Guillaume was so esteemed may have been heard by him, and may have produced a deep impression on his mind. But beyond all question George Wishart was the true spiritual father of John Knox. The preaching and companionship of that earnest man during that journey through the Lothians, which ended in his apprehension at Ormiston, did more for Knox than any other human instrumentality whatever. They wrought conviction in him, and brought him out into decision, so that from the moment when these two men parted from each other for the last time at the church of Haddington, it was no longer possible for Knox to return into the position of comparative obscurity from which he had { 14} emerged to become the body-guard of Wishart. He had come prominently out on the side of the Reformation, and the martyrdom of his teacher would only deepen his determination that he should not go back.