Portrait of John Knox by John Sartain, ca. 1842. Click for full image. [Image no. 2501]John Knox (ca. 1514-1572) was a leader of the Reforming party in his native Scotland. Knox studied with John Calvin in Geneva and took Calvin’s teachings back home with him to Scotland. The Presbyterian Church traces its ancestry back primarily to Knox in Scotland and to England, and so Knox is widely regarded as the founder of Presbyterianism.Educated in Glasgow and possibly at St. Andrews, Knox received minor orders, set up as a notary in Haddington, and then became a private tutor, c. 1544.