KNIGHT, Robert (1702-72), of Barrells, Warws. and Luxborough, Essex.

Knight was the son of the South Sea Company’s cashier, who fled to France in 1721 and became a banker in Paris. In 1727 he married Bolingbroke’s half-sister, from whom he separated in 1736 on finding her in bed with her doctor.2HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 294. Returned in 1734 for Great Grimsby, he was one of several new Whig Members who voted against the Government on the Address, 29 Jan. 1735, but subsequently returned to his allegiance, speaking against Sir John Barnard’s scheme for the conversion of the national debt in 1737 and for the convention with Spain in 1739.3HMC Carlisle, 147; Coxe, Walpole, iii. 517-18. After Walpole’s fall he procured a pardon for his exiled father, on the ground that the ex-cashier had been sufficiently punished by the forfeiture of all his available assets in England, amounting to over £200,000.4Gent. Mag. 1742, p. 442; HMC Egmont Diary, iii. 269. Continuing to support the Government, he spoke in favour of sending for the Hessians during the rebellion of 1745 and for the Hanoverian troops in 1746,5Owen, Pelhams, 291, 306 n.3. when he was created an Irish peer. In 1747 he was returned for Castle Rising by the 2nd Earl of Orford, to whom he was said to have also owed his Irish peerage, their link, according to Orford’s brother, Horace Walpole, being the manager of the actresses whom they were respectively keeping.6Walpole to Mann, 26 June 1747. He died 30 Mar. 1772.