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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.