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Updated: May 4, 2025
When, in 1562, Ninian Winzet, a Catholic priest and ex-schoolmaster, was printing a controversial tractate addressed to Knox, the magistrates seized the manuscript at the printer's house, and the author was fortunate in making his escape.
Even though the bishops were silent the old religion was not without some able and energetic defenders in the person of Leslie, soon to be the Bishop of Ross, Quintin Kennedy whose services have been referred to already, and Ninian Winzet, who caused Knox considerable embarrassment by his tracts, letters, and public disputations.
For Buchanan's politics were too advanced for his age. Not only Catholic Scotsmen, like Blackwood, Winzet, and Ninian, but Protestants, like Sir Thomas Craig and Sir John Wemyss, could not stomach the "De Jure Regni." They may have had some reason on their side.
The dominie of the school at Linlithgow, Ninian Winzet by name, had lost his place for being an idolater. In February he had brought to the notice of our Reformer and of the Queen the question, "Is John Knox a lawful minister?" If he was called by God, where were his miracles? If by men, by what manner of men? On March 3, Winzet asked Knox for "your answer in writing."
Papists would never argue except when "they were both judge and party." Knox himself never answered Ninian Winzet, who, while printing his polemic, was sought for by the police of the period, and just managed to escape. There was, however, a champion who, on November 19, challenged Knox and the other preachers to a discussion, either orally or by interchange of letters.
This practice in Scotland was as odious to good Catholics, like Quentin Kennedy, Ninian Winzet, and, rather earlier, to Ferrerius, as to Knox himself.
It has been computed that one-half of the wealth of the country was in possession of the clergy; and we have the testimony of unimpeachable witnesses to the unworthy uses to which it was put. Hector Boece, John Major, and Ninian Winzet were all three faithful sons of the Church, and all three cried aloud at the venality, avarice, and luxurious living of the higher clergy.
By open flattery do the worthless sons of our nobility get the governance of convents in commendam, and they covet these ample revenues, not for the good help that they thence might render to their brethren, but solely for the high position that these places offer." To the same effect Ninian Winzet wrote after the judgment had come.
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