With the conquest of Jerusalem on July 15, 1099, the preliminary objective of the First Crusade was attained. The victors who owed their astonishing success largely to negative factors—disunion and weakness of the Islamic forces—were thereupon confronted with the formidable task of consolidating their possessions and securing their power against Turkish counter-attacks.

No man was less suited to a life of affairs in church and state than was John Knox. Yet, by a curious trick of fate, he was forced by the exigencies of his times to assume the role of official prophet and leader of a whole kingdom. For there was no one else.

In his Preface to the study entitled, Puritan Pronaos, Samuel Eliot Morison writes: “I have trod warily for fear of the Indians that are always lying in wait to scalp that unpopular wayfarer, the New England historian.” The Indians have no quarrel with Professor Morison, and presumably are not interested in securing his scalp, but were the ancient Puritan divines of New England alive today, they would at least desire to question some of his conclusions.