Many good men and women have gone to prison for the sake of the Gospel. They’ve been captured and persecuted for spreading it, honoring it, and defending it. Some wrote from those prisons like Paul or John Bunyan. Some strengthened the faith of those around them, the way we saw Lady Jane Grey do last week while she awaited her execution from isolated detention.

But imagine– instead of a jail cell with a cot, a chamber pot, and a desk with some paper– you were chained to a bench. And your hands constantly hovered before a massive oar on board a galley ship. Imagine instead of being a prisoner, you were a slave, forced to row military ships when the wind was not in favor of the sails. This is how John Knox lived for nineteen months in the late 1540s, after he was captured by the French when they took back Scotland’s St. Andrews Castle. The fortress that had become a safe haven for Protestants during the tumultuous period where Scotland hung in the balance between the Reformation that King Henry VIII had inadvertently given rise to, and the Roman Catholic church that constantly sought to regain a foothold there.

Imagine being told one day to attend a meeting at a secret location. You travel to the house where you were told to meet and all the major politicians of your time are there. They are kneeling, promising you fealty, and calling you the new ruler of England.

On July 9th, 1553, Lady Jane Grey found that her cousin, King Edward VI had died and that in his last will and testament, he had ordered the succession of the crown be changed– passing over Edward’s older half-sister Mary Tudor to name Lady Jane Grey as his heir to the throne. This was a role she neither anticipated nor campaigned for. In fact, she first protested the crown and when she did finally accept the role, she asked God to help her rule to His glory if it be His will that she reign.