John Willock

Who was John Willock?

John Willock, Scottish reformer, was a native of Ayrshire and was educated at the University of Glasgow.

After being a monk for a short time he embraced the reformed religion and went to London, where, about 1542, he became chaplain to Henry Grey, afterwards Duke of Suffolk, the father of Lady Jane Grey.

On the accession of Mary to the English throne in 1553 he went to Emden in Friesland, where he practised as a physician, varying this profession with visits to Scotland. He was associated with the leading Scottish reformers in their opposition to the queen regent, Mary of Lorraine, and the Roman Catholic religion, and in 1558 he returned definitely to his native land.

Willock now began to preach and in 1559 was outlawed. Popular sympathy, however, rendered this sentence fruitless, and in the same year, being Knox's deputy as minister of St Giles' Cathedral, Edinburgh, he frustrated the efforts of the regent to restore the Roman Catholic religion, and administered the communion for the first time in accordance with the ideas of the reformers.