KNIVETON, Geoffrey

Kniveton’s career was a remarkable one. The series of offices he held implies that he was of gentry birth and there can be little doubt that he was closely related to John Kniveton†, who represented Nottinghamshire in the Parliament of 1401, and none that he was a younger son of the Knivetons of Bradley near Ashbourne in Derbyshire. In the subsidy returns of 1431 he is described as ‘of Bradley, gentleman’ when returned as seised of property at Spondon near Derby.3 Feudal Aids, i. 307. This family connexion may be significant in explaining how he acquired a legal training. If he was a younger son of John Kniveton of Bradley (a different person from the Nottinghamshire MP), then his stepfather was John Fynderne (d.1420), a prominent lawyer who held office in the Exchequer.

Kniveton first appears in the records in October 1419, when he attested the Derbyshire parliamentary election. It was, however, in the neighbouring shire that he made his career. In April 1421 he attested a Nottinghamshire parliamentary election and took the responsibility for delivering the return into Chancery, an indication that he already had interests at Westminster.4 C219/12/3, 5. A month later he was the recipient of a minor grant of royal patronage: the keeping of a rood of uncultivated land in Nottingham committed to him and Thomas Poge*. This is the first evidence of his involvement in the affairs of the borough, and he quickly made an impact for later in the same year he was appointed chamberlain there. Why he should have made Nottingham his home is unclear. One possibility is that he had already entered the service of Queen Joan, who held the castle and fee farm of the town as part of her jointure, although not until 1430 is there definitive evidence that he had become her servant. Alternatively, he may have moved there as a convenient centre for a lawyer with a small local practice: in 1420 and 1423, for example, described as ‘of Nottingham, gentleman’, he acted as a mainpernor for several men facing trial before the justices of gaol delivery.5 JUST3/21/10, 21; 27/8; 56/20/4; 218/5/9.

Kniveton’s expertise soon found him wider and more lucrative employment. A case pending in the court of King’s bench in the same year implies that Anne, daughter and coheiress of Thomas, Lord Bardolf, and widow of Sir William Clifford, used him to seize the goods of one she wrongly claimed as a villein pertaining to her manor of Stoke Bardolph, a few miles outside Nottingham. She was but one of his employers of status: in September 1427, when called upon to find security of the peace in Chancery, he was given the revealing description of ‘courtholder’. The records do not show why this security was required, but it is significant that he was able to call on Sir Henry Pierrepont* as one of his sureties (in 1425 he had himself stood as surety on Pierrepont’s election to Parliament). Further, a stray reference in the records of the borough court shows that, by 1432, he was the steward of the lands of William, Lord Fitzhugh, in Nottinghamshire.6 KB27/644, rot. 65; 650, rot. 19; CCR, 1422-9, p. 396; C219/13/3; Notts. Archs., Nottingham recs., ct. rolls CA1323, rot. 22.

Clearly Kniveton was an influential man beyond the confines of the borough, and it is not surprising that Queen Joan entrusted him with the administration of her substantial local interests. In the first half of 1430 he received £30 from her local receiver, William Clerk of Gedling, to spend on the repair of Nottingham castle, and later in the same year he succeeded Clerk as receiver.7 SC6/1295/2/5, 6. Thereafter he regularly appeared as the queen’s joint-plaintiff or attorney in cases she brought in the Nottingham borough court, and he made frequent journeys to London to render account and deliver money at her treasury. For instance, in February 1432 he spent as many as 16 days away from Nottingham on such a trip and as many as 33 during the accounting period between Michaelmas 1434 and 1436. He was also called upon to oil the wheels of local administration in his employer’s favour: when royal commissions were issued to inquire into waste committed by the queen in Nottingham castle and Sherwood forest, he paid two marks to the inquiry juries to ensure that their findings were favourable. He was satisfactorily compensated for his efforts. His benefits extended well beyond his annual fee of £5. Shortly before appointment he had taken a farm of the queen’s three mills in Nottingham, for which he paid £12 p.a., and in January 1433 he added to this the lease of the meadows of Nottingham castle at an additional annual farm of nearly £17.8 Nottingham ct. rolls CA1322/II, rots. 5, 10, 16; Nottingham Recs. ed. Stevenson, ii. 122, 138; SC6/1093/6, 9. The mills were destroyed by fire on 8 Apr. 1433 but were quickly rebuilt at a cost to the queen of nearly £30. To the queen he may also have owed his appointment as alnager in the county in May 1437, an office he held until 1445.9 CFR, xvi. 308; xvii. 307; E101/622/7.

Given Kniveton’s place in Queen Joan’s employ and the frequency with which his duties took him to London, it is not surprising that he should have been returned to represent his adopted town in Parliament. What is perhaps surprising is that he was not returned more often. His only election came in June 1433. He did, however, take a close interest in the elections: he attested every surviving indenture from 1435 to 1453 inclusive.10 C219/14/4, 5; 15/2, 4, 6, 7; 16/1, 2. Of more interest, however, is his earlier appearance at a county election. He was one of the 12 attestors to the irregular Nottinghamshire election of 25 Aug. 1427. The irregularity is immediately apparent from the identity of the attestors: Kniveton was named as high as third on the list, a place generally reserved for the leading shire gentry, who were conspicuous by their absence. An inquiry held at Nottingham before the justices of assize on the following 27 Feb. reveals why the attestors were so singular a group: the sheriff, Sir Thomas Gresley†, had not discharged his statutory function of summoning the suitors of the county court. Whether the attestors were part of a conspiracy to secure the return of particular candidates must be doubtful, and it is likely that Kniveton and his fellows were named because they happened to be present. At any event Kniveton’s inclusion is readily explained for he attested the borough election held on the same day.11 C219/13/5; J.S. Roskell, Commons of 1422, 15-16; Parliamentarians at Law ed. Kleineke, 116-31.

Although Queen Joan’s death on 18 July 1437 deprived Kniveton of his most important employer, he was well enough established as a man of considerable ability for the loss to have little impact on his career. Indeed, his service to the queen did not end with her death. Although her will does not survive, a case in the Nottingham borough court in January 1438 shows that her executors were our MP and her receiver-general, John Bugge.12 Nottingham ct. rolls CA 1329/II, rot. 7d. A further element of continuity was his involvement in extensive rebuilding works at Nottingham castle. During her lifetime he had supervised some minor works there, but after her death the renovations became extensive and appear to have provided him with his main employment. On 28 Nov. 1437 he was commissioned to take carpenters for the castle’s repair, and from then, as deputy of John Arderne, the clerk of the King’s works, he was responsible for the expenditure of the massive sum of nearly £1,900. The bulk of this was spent on the castle, but some of it went on improvements at Bestwood and Clipstone in the forest of Sherwood and at Rockingham castle in Northamptonshire. He was rewarded in July 1444 with appointment (from the previous Easter) as clerk of these works at a generous daily wage of 6d., and in February 1446 he received what was probably an even more valuable mark of royal favour when the Exchequer was ordered to discharge him on his oath for the money spent on these works.13 SC6/1295/2/6; E101/503/6/17, 22-24, 29-32; Hist. King’s Works ed. Brown, Colvin and Taylor, ii. 763 (which gives incomplete figures for the expenditure); CPR, 1441-6, p. 285; E404/62/124. By this date he had entered the service of Ralph, Lord Cromwell, constable of Nottingham castle and keeper of Sherwood forest from Queen Joan’s death. By September 1444 he was acting as Cromwell’s receiver for the profits of these offices and was still doing so three years later.14 HMC De L’Isle, i. 217; HMC Middleton, 245.

Despite these responsibilities Kniveton also found time in the early 1440s to continue his involvement in the administration of Nottingham – in December 1441 he not only attested the parliamentary return but stood as pledge for those elected, Thomas Alestre* and Thomas Thurland* – and this involvement intensified on the completion of his task as clerk of the works. In September 1446 he was elected to the mayoralty and three years later he was chosen as one of the seven aldermen the burgesses were empowered to elect under the terms of their new royal charter.15 The first record of the aldermens’ identity dates from Mar. 1451 but, since they were appointed for life, it is likely that it was the same seven elected in the wake of the charter: Nottingham Recs. iii. 408. As an alderman, he was an ex officio member of the borough bench and to these legal duties he added those of one of the town’s coroners. It is not known when he was appointed but he is first recorded as coroner in August 1451 and he was still in office in October 1453.16 KB9/271/40, 41.

In the 1440s and 1450s the energetic Kniveton is also recorded as providing legal and other services to the gentry of the county. In 1443 he represented John Wastnes* and another Nottinghamshire esquire, Thomas Neville of Rolleston, in the Exchequer of pleas. Indicative of closer relationships is his nomination in the same year as one of the supervisors of the will of Joan, widow of his fellow townsman, Robert Glade† (in which she made a small bequest to his son William), and in November 1453, as one of the executors of the formidable Margaret, widow of Sir Thomas Rempston† (d.1406).17 E13/142, rot. 48d; 143, rot. 49; Borthwick Inst., Univ. of York, Abps. Regs. 20 (Booth), f. 260; York registry wills, prob. reg. 2, f. 73. In view of his own concerns and his involvement in those of others, it was natural that he had regular recourse to the courts. In Easter term 1443, for example, he had pleas pending in the court of common pleas for debts totalling over £400 against as many as 14 individuals, two of whom were of gentry rank. Since all but one of these claims was for either £20 or £40 there can be no doubt that the majority (if not all) of them arose out of bonds. These had probably been taken by him in some official capacity, perhaps during a term as under sheriff, an office for which his qualifications particularly suited him. While this term was exceptional in the number of cases he had pending, few terms went by when he did not have at least one action of debt in progress, generally for small sums against yeomen and tradesmen of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.18 CP40/729, rots. 82d, 152d, 178, 343, 401d.

The date of Kniveton’s death is unknown. He last appears in the records in Trinity term 1455 when the defendant in a plea of trespass sued by Sir Thomas Rempston† (d.1458), an action that probably arose out of his role as one of the executors of the knight’s mother. He was dead by March 1458, when his son and heir, William, procured a pardon as administrator of his goods (by virtue of his intestacy) and tenant of his lands. William followed his father in making Nottingham his home, serving as one of the sheriffs there in 1459-60, but he was a far less prominent man. Our MP’s administrative activities find an echo in the records as late as November 1464 when William took the precaution of suing a pardon of all debts due as result of his father’s clerkship of works, supposedly discharged by oath 18 years before.19 KB27/777, rot. 12; C67/42, m. 30; C219/16/5; CPR, 1452-61, p. 368, 1461-7, p. 361.

Kniveton’s landholdings are poorly documented. In the tax returns of 1435-6 he was assessed on an annual income of £5, no more than his fee as Queen Joan’s receiver, and this was clearly an underestimate. Not only is he recorded as holding property in Spondon as early as 1431, but it is unlikely that the queen’s was his only fee and that he was without property in Nottingham. In the subsidy returns of 1450-1 his annual income is more realistically assessed at £12 (he himself was one of the assessors). One of the acquisitions he had made in the meantime is recorded in the rolls of the Nottingham court: on 13 Jan. 1446 Nicholas Widmerpole and Elizabeth, his wife, grand-daughter and heiress of the wealthy Nottingham merchant, John Tansley†, granted him and Agnes, his wife, a messuage on the corner of Fletcher Gate next to the tenement he already held there. This must, however, have been just one of many purchases made by Kniveton in the course of his long career, for in 1473 the family’s freehold in the town was assigned a taxable annual value of as much as 90s.20 E179/238/78; 240/266; Feudal Aids, i. 307; Nottingham ct. rolls CA1335, rot. 5; Nottingham Recs. ii. 296.