More than twenty years ago, in the Introduction to his influential article which focused upon the life of Anne Locke, Patrick Collinson bemoaned the lack of recognition given to the role of women in the English Reformation. Happily, over the last few years this situation has been somewhat rectified, as modern scholarship has increasingly emphasized the degree of feminine participation in the spiritual upheavals of the period. The problem, however, remains that there is little evidence of personal feminine testimony, especially for the immediate post-Reformation period. The example of Elizabeth Bowes is, unfortunately, a case in point. Mrs Bowes, the wife of a prominent Durham gentleman, is well known to historians as a devoted follower and later the mother-in-law of the Scottish reformer, John Knox. Particularly during the early 1550s, Elizabeth maintained a regular correspondence with Knox. Of this, some thirty of Knox’s letters have been preserved, mainly in the form of a transcript copied from the originals in 1603. These letters, indeed, provide the main source of evidence for the life of the reformer during this period. Yet it is also apparent, from the tone of Knox’s replies, that much of the correspondence was devoted to the discussion and analysis of Mrs Bowes’s religious anxieties and aspirations, as she struggled to come to terms with her conversion to the Protestant Faith.