KNIGHT, Roger

Knight’s career is an excellent illustration of the capacity of a successful merchant to build on the foundations laid by a more modestly successful father and acquire the landed stake necessary to establish his family among the gentry. After studying at Cambridge University, he spent his early career as one of the leading citizens of his native Lincoln. Beyond serving as mayor not long after his father’s death, he represented the city in the Parliaments of 1431 and 1437.7 C67/38, m. 1; CFR, xv. 169; C219/14/2; 15/1. But, enterprisingly, he also found a broader canvas for his activities. By the early 1430s he was a merchant of the Calais staple, a status which explains his election in April 1432 as mayor of the staple at Boston.8 He was again elected in the following Apr.: C267/4/30, 31. In the Parliament of 1433, along with another stapler from Lincoln, Hamon Sutton I*, and four other staplers, he successfully petitioned that the repayment of their loan of nearly £3,000 for the defence of the realm to be assigned on forthcoming subsidies. His prominence as a wool merchant found further expression in his appointment, again with Sutton among others, to negotiate with the duke of Burgundy in February 1435.9 RP, iv. 474-5 (cf. PROME, xi. 156); E122/9/28; Rot. Gasc. et Franc. ii. 283.

From the beginnings of his career Knight invested the profits of trade in the purchase of property. As early as April 1425 he purchased two messuages, once owned by Robert Messingham†, in the parish of St. Botolph in Wigford, in the suburbs of Lincoln.10 Lancs. RO, Towneley of Towneley mss, DDTo O/3/39. Much more significant for the future of his family were the more extensive acquisitions he made outside his native city. In 1433 he completed the purchase of a moiety of the manor of Walesby, about 16 miles to the north of Lincoln, and the advowson of two parts of the church there from Sir John Byron*. The seller’s principal interests lay in Lancashire and this probably explains why he was prepared to alienate lands, inherited from his mother in 1426, that were well separated even from his main Lincolnshire estates.11 Feudal Aids, iii. 267, 279, 357; CP25(1)/145/158/8. Since lands carrying manorial lordship were hard to come by, the acquisition of Walesby was a highly significant moment in Knight’s career. He quickly set about consolidating his new manor. Between 1437 and 1447 he purchased some 500 acres in Walesby and neighbouring vills from Patrick Skipwith* and William Wadingham; and in 1451 he completed the acquisition of the Walesby lands once of the Peake family. By his death he had also acquired lands in nearby Normanby-le-Wold and Claxby, and, more distantly, at Cherry Willingham near Lincoln at Thimbleby near Horncastle.12 CP25(1)/145/158/31, 47; 160/6; C1/11/406; Towneley mss, DDTo K/11/31; CIPM Hen. VII, iii. 963-4. He had lands at Normanby by Hil. 1448: CP40/748, rot. 365d. His trading interests prompted another acquisition much further afield: in March 1453 he completed the acquisition of three messuages with two cellars in Calais.13 Towneley mss, DDTo K10/31.

It is remarkable that Knight should have been able to concentrate his main land purchases in so narrow an area. Less remarkably, like so many purchasers, he soon found himself in legal difficulties in making good his title. It was probably in the late 1430s and early 1440s that he was obliged to sue Wadingham’s feoffees, headed by Andrew Goodhand, for failing to convey lands in Walesby to him as instructed by their feoffor. Goodhand, one of the lesser gentry with property in Walesby, was also at odds with him over the purchase of the Byron manor and advowson. According to a Chancery petition he contested Knight’s title and their rival claims were put to the arbitration of two local lawyers, including Robert Sheffeld*, who divided the lands and advowson between them. If the petition is to be believed, Knight refused to abide by this ruling, and his heirs were able to free themselves of the legal consequences of his contumacy by obtaining, from Goodhand’s executor, all the bonds and evidences relating to the award.14 C1/11/406; 53/41. For Goodhand: Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. iii. 64.

The acquisition of manorial lordship meant that Knight came to play a part in county affairs. His wealth was recognized in 1439 when he was distrained to take up knighthood. In July 1441 he sat on the county jury which awarded Ralph, Lord Cromwell, punitive damages against Sir John Gra* in a writ of covenant.15 KB27/766, rot. 20. Gra unsuccessfully sued a writ of attaint against the jurors: KB27/768, rot. 72. On 8 Jan. 1442 he attested the return for the county of Thomas Meres* and Robert Sheffeld. Interestingly, four of his fellow jurors were also numbered among the attestors, and it may be more than coincidence that in the Parliament which followed Gra petitioned against his mistreatment by Cromwell. Perhaps Knight and his fellow jurors were acting in the latter’s interest. Five years later, on 30 Jan. 1447, he attested the return for the county of Byron; their earlier association suggests he was supporting his candidature.16 Lincs. Archit. and Arch. Soc. i. 74-75.

Much of what is known of the later part of Knight’s career concerns his role as a stapler. By 1449 the staple’s loans to the Crown amounted to £10,700, of which our MP and Thomas Pycowe had contributed £426 10s. 4d. In October 1449 they were licensed to secure repayment over four years by shipping wool free of customs from Kingston-upon-Hull. In June 1451 Knight obtained further such licences for shipments from Hull and Boston to compensate him for his contribution to the fine of 4,000 marks the staplers had been obliged to pay to the duke of Burgundy for infringements of the Anglo-Burgundian truce. In October 1454, when new licences were issued, he was still owed nearly £200 on this latter account and, with Pycowe, a little over £200 on account of the earlier loan.17 CPR, 1446-52, p. 316; 1452-61, pp. 209, 211-13; E159/227, brevia Mich. rot. 14d; 232, brevia Mich. rot. 8, Hil. rot. 32. For evidence of Knight trading from Hull in 1455: Customs Accts. Hull, 1453-90 (Yorks. Arch. Rec. Ser. cxliv), 16. Towards the end of his life he was involved in further financial dealings with the Crown. Shortly before December 1465 Thomas Blount*, acting on the King’s behalf, paid him £100 to redeem certain royal jewels he held in pledge, perhaps for the repayment of a loan he had made in 1462.18 E404/73/1/110; E403/827A, mm. 8, 10.

Knight’s extensive commercial interests led him into litigation with several important men. In 1452 he was defending an action for a debt of £40 sued against him by Thomas, Lord Roos. Seven years later, three of his fellow citizens of Lincoln, headed by Hamon Sutton I, recovered nearly £250 against him in an action of debt on broken bonds, and in the same year he found himself as a co-defendant in a plea sued by Thomas Everingham* alleging abduction of a ward from Langford.19 CP40/765, rot. 233; 792, rot. 394d; 793, rot. 363; 794, rot. 430. Much more interesting details of Knight’s career and business methods are provided in a Chancery petition presented against him in the mid 1460s by Walter Hynde, a merchant from Barton-upon-Humber once in his employment.20 For Hynde: CPR, 1461-7, p. 1; Customs Accts. Hull, 133. Hynde made three allegations against him. First, that Knight had charged him with £100 of desperate debts from the period when he was acting as his factor in Flanders, in discharge of which he had conveyed lands worth 52 marks p.a. to his employer for three years. Knight had retained these lands for ten and a half years, taking £364 in profits, and had only surrendered them under pressure from Sir Thomas Neville (d.1460), younger son of the earl of Salisbury. Second, that a merchant of Flanders owed Hynde nearly £170, which Knight wrongfully obtained by misrepresenting himself to the merchant as Hynde’s agent. Third, and most interesting, is the allegation that Knight was in his debt for a ransom Walter had paid on his behalf. According to the petition, Knight had been captured by the French on ‘Gravelyng Water’ some 14 years before, led to the castle of Journy and put to a massive ransom of 16,300 saluts (4,075 marks). He had written to Hynde asking him to labour his creditors and others to raise this sum. Dutifully, Walter made representations to the duchess of Burgundy, securing his employer’s release on the payment of a modest £164 8s. 4d. which he paid himself. On Knight’s return he not unnaturally expected both the repayment of this sum and an additional sum in reward. He got neither. Nor is it known whether his Chancery petition secured him redress against his ungrateful former master.21 C1/33/12. There are some inconsistencies in his story. Knight is said to have been captured by the French yet he was held in a Burgundian castle and the duchess of Burgundy was instrumental in obtaining his release. Perhaps his captors were Burgundians acting in retaliation to the piracy of Robert Wenyngton alias Cane* in the spring of 1449.

In the later years of his life Knight was troubled by the allegation that he was illegitimate. In 1468 he sued a writ of formedon against a local clerk for 25 acres of land in Walesby, only to have the action fail when an inquiry before the bishop of Lincoln found that he had been born four years before his parents’ marriage. Five years later, a similar allegation was made in another suit: the Cheshire knight, Sir John Savage of Maxfield, claimed against him as an escheat ten acres of land in Saxilby, near Lincoln, on the grounds that both he and his faather were bastards. On 8 Apr. 1474 another inquiry conducted by the bishop of Lincoln found this claim to be true.22 CP40/829, rot. 425; 848, rot. 344.

These unhappy findings, however inconvenient to Knight himself, had no long-term impact on the fortunes of his family. He died soon afterwards, but the family’s advance continued under his grandson and heir, Thomas (d.1489).23 His gds. was litigating as his executor in Mich. term 1474: CP40/852, rot. 465. Indeed, Thomas had become a more important man than his grandfather even in our MP’s lifetime. By 1464 he had found a place in the household of Edward IV, and he was appointed to the quorum of the Lindsey bench in 1467. As sheriff in 1482-3, he played an active part in the suppression of Buckingham’s rebellion.24 E404/72/4/78-79; 78/2/4, 47; E371/232, rot. 53. He greatly extended the family lands by acquiring the manor of North Ingleby from Thomasina, widow of Sir John Gra. This would seem to have been a very fortunate purchase: in 1476 he is said to have found £1,000 of treasure trove in his house there.25 Lincs. Peds. ed. Maddison, 1273. His son, another Thomas†, represented Lincoln in the Parliament of 1491 and took up knighthood a decade later, but with him the family failed in the male line.26 Wedgwood has conflated the two Thomases: HP Biogs. ed. Wedgwood and Holt, 518-19. In his will of 1509 Sir Thomas endowed prayers for the soul of his great-grandfather Roger.27 C142/25/77; PCC 23 Bennett (PROB11/16, f. 178).