GALLY KNIGHT, Henry (1786-1846), of 69 Lower Grosvenor Street, London and Firbeck Hall, Yorkshire

Gally Knight, a poet and writer on architecture who represented Nottinghamshire North for over a decade, was described by James Grant in 1838 as ‘one out of many instances of literary men, of great talent and high reputation, failing to make any impression in the house’.1J. Grant, Random recollections of the Lords and Commons: second series (1838), ii. 105-6. However, by the end of his parliamentary career in 1846, Gally Knight, particularly through his select committee work, had proved himself to be not only a tireless champion of the arts, but also a committed reformer of the plight of the poorer clergy.

A ‘very bald-headed’ man who was ‘rather stoutly made’, Gally Knight had been returned for Aldborough in 1814, before his support for Catholic relief put him at odds with his patron, the fourth duke of Newcastle under Lyne, prompting his resignation the following year.2Ibid., 109-10. Thereafter he published a number of poems, inspired largely by his earlier travels in the East.3H. Gally Knight, Ilderim, a Syrian Tale (1816); Phrosyne, a Grecian Tale (1817); Alashtar, an Arabian Tale (1817); Eastern sketches, in verse (1830). His poetry, which received mixed reviews, was detested by his Cambridge contemporary Lord Byron, whose 1818 ‘Ballad to the Tune of Salley in our Alley’ directly mocked Gally Knight. One stanza was particularly brutal:

He has a Seat in Parliament,

Is fat and passing wealthy;

And surely he should be content

With these and being healthy:

But Great Ambition will misrule

Men at all risks to sally,

Now makes a poet, now a fool,

And we know which of Gally.

Despite his literary pursuits, Gally Knight had remained attuned to political affairs, becoming one of the Fitzwilliam circle of Whigs, and in 1828 published a pamphlet on the Foreign and domestic view of the Catholic Question, in which he pressed the case for Catholic relief. At the 1831 general election he came in as a Reformer for Earl Fitzwilliam’s pocket borough of Malton, and gave steady support to the Grey ministry’s reform bill.4HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 258-60. Declining to stand in 1832, he turned his attention to the study of architecture, and in 1836 published the acclaimed An Architectural tour of Normandy. He went on to publish further successful architectural studies based on his travels in Europe.5H. Gally Knight, The Normans in Sicily (1838); Saracenic and Norman remains to illustrate ‘Normans in Sicily’ (1840); The ecclesiastical architecture of Italy from Constantine to the fifteenth century (1842). Critical success, though, still eluded his literary work: his 1839 poem Hannibal in Bithynia was described by the Spectator as ‘devoid alike of fire and strong interest’.6Spectator (1839), xxii. 351.

In March 1835 Gally Knight offered for the vacancy at Nottinghamshire North created by viscount Lumley’s succession as 8th earl of Scarbrough. The constituency was home to his estate at Warsop, originally owned by his uncle, John Gally Knight, MP for Aldbrough, 1784-96. Although he had sat as a Reformer in 1831, he now stood as a supporter of Stanley, declaring that he would ‘throw my mote into the scale of that middle party ... for the purpose of, on the one hand, securing good measures for the country, and, on the other, of repelling those assailants who are tempting to carry the citadel by storm’.7Sheffield Independent, 4 Apr. 1835. Returned unopposed, he joined the ‘Derby Dilly’, and voted against Melbourne’s newly-formed ministry on Irish municipal reform.8Gally Knight is listed as a member of the Derby Dilly in R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative party, 1830-1867 (1978), 378. His voting habits, though, reflected an independent streak, and he divided with government on Irish poor relief, 5 June 1837, and backed Lord John Russell’s motion for a committee to inquire into church leases, 12 June 1837.

A frequent attender who made occasional contributions to debate, Gally Knight’s speaking abilities were recorded in detail by the gallery reporter James Grant:

He has got a tolerable voice, but the evil of it is, he has got no ideas in the expression of which to employ it. He speaks seldom: in that he is wise. When he does speak, he is generally very brief; very wise again. He attempts none of the loftier flights of oratory: a most commendable resolution; for he never was destined to soar. He contents himself with giving utterance, two or three times a session, to thirty or forty sentences, not sentiments; and this done, he resumes his seat, with a look of infinite self-complacency.9Grant, Random recollections, ii. 106-7.

In his first Parliament he spoke mainly on Irish and church issues. He criticised the Irish municipal reform bill for placing ‘exclusive power in the hands of one of the two great parties into which Ireland was divided’, 8 Mar. 1836, and raised the spectre of local issues being perverted for political causes, 11 Apr. 1837. He spoke in support of the government’s commutation of tithes bill, 25 Mar. 1836, and Lord John Russell’s motion for an inquiry into church leases, 12 June 1837, but attacked the government’s proposals to reform church rates, 3 Mar. 1837. His commitment to church reform was evident when he chaired the 1837 select committee on first fruits and tenths, and the administration of Queen Anne’s bounty, the tax paid by the clergy for the augmentation of poor livings.10PP 1837 (384), vi. 2.

Re-elected by a slim majority in 1837, Gally Knight informed Peel of his intention to support fully his leadership of the Conservative party.11Gally Knight to Peel, 19 Aug. 1837: BL Add Mss 40424, ff. 87-8. He duly followed Peel into the division lobby on most major issues. In February 1838 he moved the first fruits and tenths bill, which proposed a moderate increase of the annual produce of the taxes levied on the clergy.12Hansard, 28 Feb. 1838, vol. 41, cc. 273-83. However, the bill came to nothing, and despite his subsequent plea that the distribution of the taxes was not only inadequate but also ‘unjust’, 3 Mar. 1840, the annual proceeds remained fixed at £14,000. He remained, though, supportive of the government’s attempts to reform church leases, and chaired two select committees on the issue.13PP 1837-38 (692), ix. 2; PP 1839 (247), viii. 238. He spoke out in favour of the Maynooth grant, arguing that the spread of education of Ireland ‘was the best mode of supporting and advancing the progress of Protestantism’, 30 July 1838, and zealously advocated the role of the established church in national education, 29 June 1839. He also made a number of interventions defending the corn laws and attacked the government for their failure to deal with the threat of Chartist violence, 29 Jan. 1840. He voted for Peel’s motion of no confidence in Melbourne’s ministry, 4 July 1841.

In the Commons, Gally Knight also took a close interest in the arts. He moved for a select committee on the plan for Trafalgar Square (which he subsequently chaired), 3 July 1840, and was an assiduous questioner on the 1841 select committee on national monuments and works of art.14PP 1840 (548), xii. 387; PP 1841 sess. 1 (416), vi. 438. He was also an active member of the 1841 select committee on the fine arts, which initiated the historical fresco paintings in the Houses of Parliament.15PP 1841 sess. 1 (423), vi. 331. In October 1841 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society.16Gent. Mag. (1846), i. 433.

At the 1841 general election Gally Knight, who was returned unopposed, launched a scathing attack on the government and dismissed the ‘fallacies’ propagated by the Anti-Corn Law League.17The Times, 8 July 1841. He supported Peel’s sliding scale on the corn duties, 9 Mar. 1842, and consistently opposed opposition motions for the repeal of the corn laws. He continued to follow the premier into the division lobby on most major issues, although he divided against him on the main clauses of the factories bill, 22 Mar. 1844. In one of his lengthiest speeches he praised Peel’s income tax proposals, 11 Apr. 1842, and he also offered an impassioned defence of church rates, 16 June 1842.

Fittingly, Gally Knight’s final speeches in the Commons were on the subject of the arts. He seconded a motion to improve the laws relating to dramatic literature, adding, in a rhetorical flourish, that ‘dramas are not only the mirror of the age, but may be schools of morality’, 30 June 1842. Speaking in support of a select committee report which recommended improvements to the British Museum and National Gallery, he mocked Sir Robert Inglis (himself a fellow of the Royal Society) for his opposition to a motion to improve admissions to public institutions, claiming that it was like ‘listening to some venerable monk who was commending Virgil and Cicero to the flames’. For Gally Knight, the arts could not ‘flourish unless the public at large take an interest in them, and are capable of appreciating their merits’, 14 July 1842. The artistic merits of Trafalgar Square, however, were completely lost on him. In his last known speech, he launched a scathing critique of Nelson’s Column:

The Nelson Testimonial, as it had been executed, was another architectural disgrace to this metropolis—not only a disgrace in itself, but it was most injurious to every thing in its vicinity, and did as much harm as possible to the finest situation in the world. ... What a congregation of bad taste did that one spot exhibit with the National Gallery behind, and the Nelson Testimonial in front—such a column cap[ped] with such a statue, in such a cocked hat! His only consolation was, that Frenchmen, as he had been told, when they came to London, mistook the statue for that of Napoleon, and he had been credibly informed that this imaginary generosity on the part of the British nation had considerably allayed the irritation against this country which had recently prevailed in France.18Hansard, 22 July 1844, vol. 76, cc. 1250-51.

His health declining, Gally Knight rarely attended the House in the 1845 session. He died in harness at his London residence in February 1846.19Morning Post, 12 Feb. 1846. His will provided a number of legacies for Granville Harcourt Vernon, MP for East Retford, 1831-47, and directed that his Langold estate be sold for the benefit of his friend and neighbour Sir Thomas Wollaston White. His estates at Firbeck, Kirton and Warsop, and his London house were left to his wife for her life. His will ordered that after her death £6,000 from the sale of Firbeck should go to the ecclesiastical commissioners.20Gent. Mag. (1846), i. 434. A selection of his correspondence is held by the British Library, London.

Although one of Gally Knight’s obituaries remembered him as ‘a not very frequent speaker in the Commons’, and focused mainly on his artistic achievements, (a narrative that remains in his entry in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography), his impact in the Commons should not be completely overlooked.21Ibid.; W.W. Wroth, ‘Knight, Henry Gally (1786-1846)’, rev. J. Harding, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. His assiduous service on a range of select committees, in which he championed public access to the arts, left a lasting legacy in the form of the historical paintings at Westminster and the architecture of Trafalgar Square, even if Nelson’s Column was not to his taste.