Knox's life cannot have been so bad as that of the Huguenot galley slaves under Louis XIV.

He was allowed to receive letters; he read and commented on a treatise written in prison by Balnaves; and he even wrote a theological work, unless this work was his commentary on Balnaves.

These things can only have been possible when the galleys were not on active service.

In a very manly spirit, he never dilated on his sufferings, and merely alludes to "the torment I sustained in the galleys." He kept up his heart, always prophesying deliverance; and once (June, 1548 ?), when in view of St.Andrews, declared that he should preach again in the kirk where his career began.

Unluckily, the person to whom he spoke, at a moment when he himself was dangerously ill, denied that he had ever been in the galleys at all! {30b} He was Sir James Balfour, a notorious scoundrel, quite untrustworthy; according to Knox, he had spoken of the prophecy, in Scotland, long before its fulfilment.
Knox's health was more or less undermined, while his spiritual temper was not mollified by nineteen months of the galleys, mitigated as they obviously were.
It is, doubtless, to his "torment" in the galleys that Knox refers when he writes: "I know how hard the battle is between the spirit and the flesh, under the heavy cross of affliction, where no worldly defence, but present death, does appear.