KNIGHT, Stephen

Knight was the eldest son of a minor gentry family from Faversham, although the identity of his father is not known. By the end of 1446 he had entered the royal household, and together with William Elton*, a yeoman of the Crown, he was entrusted with the custody of an appellant named William Smallwode. Then described as a groom of Henry VI’s chamber, by Michaelmas 1449 he had been promoted to one of the yeomen there,3 E403/765, m. 10. and at an unknown date he became a yeoman of the Crown. Clearly well connected within the Household, on 23 Oct. 1449 he acted as a mainpernor for Richard Andrew, the King’s secretary, granted the wardship and marriage of the heir of the prominent Kentishman, Richard Frogenhale.4 CPR, 1446-52, p. 305. Perhaps Knight owed his position to some connexion with James Fiennes*, Lord Saye and Sele, the King’s chamberlain and the leading Household figure in his home county, yet if so no obvious material benefits came his way as a result.

Lord Saye was treasurer of England in December 1449 when Knight was appointed escheator of Kent and Middlesex. Unfortunately for him, his term of office coincided with Cade’s rebellion in the following summer, and he soon found himself embroiled in the violent disturbances and their aftermath. By then he appears to have taken up residence in Rochester, where (for this year at least) he rented an inn called Le Crown from the wardens of Rochester bridge,5 Rochester Bridge Trust, wardens’ accts. 1449-50, F 1/48. and at the beginning of July 1450, with Cade and his supporters away in London, he seized the arch-rebel’s goods and stored them in his house in the city. From there, according to a later indictment, on 3 July a local barber named William Testwode stole a quantity of them, valued at £19 6s. 8d., together with £40 in cash.6 KB9/284/49, 50; KB27/783, rex rot. 1d. Nine days later two Exchequer officials, Robert Shamell and William Appultrefeld, arrived in Rochester with (Sir) Thomas Tyrell* and Richard Waller to take custody of the goods remaining.

In 1451 Knight twice acted as a mainpernor on behalf of Appultrefeld, in the grant of property in Kent and London.7 CFR, xviii. 212, 215. Yet he appears to have been pursued at the Exchequer for Cade’s belongings long after the end of his term of office as escheator, and his election as one of the MPs for Rochester in February 1453 may have arisen from his desire to settle this matter. He joined many other members of the Household in the Commons assembled at Reading. Even so, it was not until Michaelmas term 1454, some six months after the end of the Parliament’s final session, that process against those involved in the custody and disposal of Cade’s goods was brought to an end. In the same term Knight also sued out a writ exonerating him from accounting for the lands of John Broke, for which he was also being pursued at the Exchequer.8 E159/231, recorda, Mich. rots. 2, 19d, 37. By then he was no longer a member of the Household, having been excluded following the King’s mental collapse and the reforms introduced subsequently. When he purchased a pardon in February 1458, covering all arrears, fines and amercements before 1 Sept. 1454, Knight was described as ‘late yeoman of the Crown’, and by that stage had probably left royal service altogether.9 C67/42, m. 18; E159/236, brevia, Hil. rot. 8d.

The remainder of Knight’s career is obscure. In November 1458, as a ‘gentleman’ of Rochester, he acted as mainpernor for John Beynsbe, a yeoman of the Crown, in the grant of the wardship and marriage of the heir of James Fynawns,10 CFR, xix. 223. but there is no evidence of further employment on royal business. Little evidence exists of Knight’s private affairs, although in that Michaelmas term he was accused by the prioress of Davington of abducting a nun some three years previously. The circumstances of this alleged abduction are not known.11 CP40/791, rot. 293d; 795, rot. 138d. In October 1469 he headed a group of men from Davington, Faversham and Ore who seized a Flemish cogship at nearby Hame in which unknown malefactors were attempting to smuggle wool. Empowered to value the cargo, they duly sold the wool for £18 1s. 8½d., but after the sale Thomas Williamson, a Faversham mercer, claimed in the Exchequer that the goods were his and that Knight and the rest had seized them illegally. This claim was eventually rejected and they rendered account four years later.12 E159/246, recorda, Mich. rot. 18; E101/457/34.

Knight made his will on 8 Apr. 1475. He gave no explicit instructions as to his burial and concerned himself almost entirely with the disposal of his property, instructing his feoffees to make estate of his holdings in Davington and elsewhere to another group of feoffees, led by John Catesby, one of the serjeants-at-law, who in turn were to deliver seisin to his widow, Margaret. After Margaret’s decease the inheritance was to be divided between his six sons. Not included in this settlement were three acres of land in ‘Davington field’, which were to be put at the disposal of the prioress of Davington on condition that she should keep Knight’s obit in the priory. The will was witnessed by Philip Thornbury, parish priest of Faversham and brother of John* and Richard Thornbury*, but oddly Knight’s executors were not named in the registered copy.13 Centre for Kentish Studies, Maidstone, Canterbury archdeaconry ct. wills, PRC 17/1, f. 387. The settlement of his estate resulted in litigation. In 1484 his widow petitioned the chancellor for writs of sub poena to be sent to Catesby and the other feoffees, who, she claimed, had failed to deliver seisin to her of the lands following the death without issue of all six of her sons. Catesby in reply claimed to have no knowledge of the terms of Knight’s will. This case was further complicated by a petition by Knight’s brother, Thomas. He claimed that Stephen’s lands were a moiety of the inheritance of their mother, Alice Brumston, which, according to the local custom of gavelkind, had fallen to her two sons equally; on Stephen’s death, his moiety, according to common law principles, should have reverted to his brother. Thomas asked the chancellor to issue writs to Catesby and his colleagues ordering them to deliver seisin to him. Further, he attempted to invalidate Margaret’s petition by asserting that she had been married to Robert Swayne when she sought her writ of sub poena and that this should properly have been done jointly in the name of her new husband.14 C1/65/241-50.