Richard Knightley KB MP (abt. 1614 - 1661)

Born about 1614 in Fawsley, Northamptonshire, England

Ancestors

Descendants

Died Jun 1661 at about age 47 in London, England

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Biography

Sir Richard Knightley was a member of the aristocracy in England.

Richard Knightley KB MP was born in England.

Richard was born about 1614 (sources give c.1610 and c.1617). He was the son of Richard Knightley and Anne Littleton. He died in June of 1661 (two sources give the 22nd and one the 29th).

Family and Education

b. c.1610, o.s. of Richard Knightley of Burgh Hall, Staffs. and Fawsley by Jane, da. of Sir Edward Littleton of Pillaton, Staffs. educ. Lincoln, Oxf. matric. 24 Oct. 1628, aged 18, BA 1631, MA 1633; G. Inn 1633. m. (1) c.1637, Elizabeth (d.1643), da. of John Hampden† of Great Hampden, Bucks., 1s. 1da.; (2) 22 July 1647, Anne, da. of Sir William Courteen, merchant, of London, wid. of Hon. Essex Devereux of Leigh Court, Warws., 1s. 2da. suc. fa. 1650; KB 23 Apr. 1661.^[1][2]

Like the rest of his family, Knightley's religious inclinations were Puritan.^[3]

This son, Sir Richard Knightley (1617–1661), was admitted to Gray's Inn 17 May 1633 (ib. p. 199), and about 1637 married Elizabeth, eldest daughter of John Hampden, who died in 1643, greatly to the distress of her father.

He married in 1647 a second wife, Ann, daughter of Sir William Courten, and widow of Essex Devereux, son and heir of Walter Devereux, fifth viscount Hereford. His widow was buried at Fawsley on 5 Feb. 1702–3, aged 88. By her Knightley had two sons, Richard (1647–1655) and Essex (1649–1671). The latter's widow, Sarah, daughter of Thomas Foley of Witley, married as second husband John Hampden the younger [q. v.]^[4]

Death

He was created knight of the Bath for the coronation of Charles II but his reluctant participation in the Popish ceremony hastened his end, and he died shortly afterwards in London on 29 June. He was buried at Fawsley. His son inherited an estate valued, for matrimonial purposes, at £2,000 p.a., but the next member of the family to enter Parliament was Valentine Knightley, who sat for the county as a Tory from 1748 to 1754.

He died in London on 22 June 1661,^[2] and was buried on 6 July at Fawsley.

Property

Fawsley Manor

"His son Sir Valentine Knightley succeeded to Fawsley and to the Puritan tradition, for with his father he had been a signer of the unlucky petition of 1605, and from him Fawsley passed in 1618 to his nephew Richard Knightley of Preston Capes. With him another Puritan ruled in Fawsley. He returned again and again to Parliament, where he ranged himself with the obstinate opponents of the Court. His shrievalty of Northamptonshire in 1626 is said to have been due to the king's desire to keep him from Westminster. He saw the inside of the king's prison of the Fleet for resisting the forced loan ; was close at the elbows of Eliot, Pym and Hampden ; and set John Dod, the Cambridge Puritan, in Fawsley rectory. At his death Fawsley passed again from the direct line to another Richard Knightley, a nephew of Penry's patron. This Richard's son married a daughter of John Hampden, and sat in the Short Parliament and in the Long. He signed the solemn league and covenant, but refused to aid in the plans for trying the king, and for his reluctance was a prisoner for a fortnight in the hands of the army. He might have been Speaker, had he willed it, of Richard Cromwell's Parliament ; but the tide was turning. Richard Knightley sat as one of that Council of State which recalled the king to enjoy his own again ; and at the coronation of King Charles II. the Puritan statesman became a Knight of the Bath."^[5]

Sources

1. ↑ The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983 [1]
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1} "Kandruth-Kyte," in Alumni Oxonienses 1500-1714, ed. Joseph Foster (Oxford: University of Oxford, 1891), 837-867. British History Online, accessed October 9, 2023, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/alumni-oxon/1500-1714/pp837-867.
3. ↑ Wikipedia [2]
4. ↑ WikiSource [3]
5. ↑ The Ancestor; a quarterly review of county and family history, heraldry and antiquities, pg 12 [4]