KNIGHTLEY, Thomas

Nothing is known of Knightley’s family background. If he was related to Richard Knightley*, a prominent member of the local gentry, their relationship has left no trace on the records. He first appears early in 1415 when he entered into a bond in £20 to Richard Napton, prior of St. Andrew, Northampton, as surety for the farmer of a water-mill belonging to the priory. Five years later, in 1420, he appeared in person in the court of King’s bench to sue for trespass a weaver from Holdenby, near his home town, and a husbandman of Kelmarsh in the north of the county.2 CP40/702, rot. 112; KB27/637, rot. 5. As with the other MPs of Northampton during this period, Knightley was probably still a relatively young man when elected to Parliament and first holding borough office. His term as bailiff led him into difficulties with the Crown. In 1424 the county sheriff was ordered to arrest him for a breach of the statute of Edward II, which made it an offence for an officer keeping the assize of wine and victuals to trade in those commodities. Whether he ever appeared to answer is not known, but since he was a baker by trade his breach of the statute is not surprising. He was soon faced with a difficulty of another sort: according to an action he sued in person in the court of common pleas in Easter term 1425, he had been assaulted and wounded in London by a Northampton corveser.3 KB27/655, rex rot. 10d; CP40/657, rot. 41.

Knightley’s commercial interests were more varied and extensive than the description of ‘baker’ implies. Although his election to Parliament came early in his career, it did so when he already had sufficient capital for speculative ventures. On 14 Mar. 1423 he purchased from Mary, the mother of Sir Thomas Green*, for the sum of 50 marks, all ‘underwode and shredynges’ of trees in 44 acres of woodland in Greens Norton, and followed this a few weeks later by undertaking to buy for a further £45 specified timber growing there.4 CP40/679, rot. 507d. Significant business interests are also implied in several actions of debt he had pending in the court of common pleas at this time, the defendants including a yeoman of London, a ‘loder’ of Bristol and the abbot of Sulby in Northamptonshire.5 CP40/654, rots. 294d, 331. By the late 1420s his agreement with Mary Green was leading him into protracted litigation. In 1428 he brought actions against her in the court of common pleas on broken bonds in the sums of £40 and £45, no doubt because he had been prevented from taking the wood he had purchased. Two years later her son replied by suing him for illegally taking trees and underwood worth £40 from Greens Norton. It seems that the wealthy Sir Thomas disapproved of the bargain Knightley had made with his mother and was presumably able to overturn it.6 CP40/669, rot. 219; 670, rot. 19d; 678, rots. 247, 292d; 682, rot. 100.

It is clear from his two appointments as a royal tax collector and his connexions that during the 1430s Knightley numbered among the leading townsmen of Northampton. When attached to answer the prior of St. Andrew in 1431 on a plea arising out of the bond of 1415, he was able to call on John Bertram*, another of the town’s former MPs, as surety, and two years later he himself offered mainprise for John Spriggy† and John Bosworth*, other former MPs, in the court of King’s bench. He also seems to have been one of Spriggy’s feoffees in property in Far Cotton and Hardingstone on the outskirts of the town.7 CP40/682, rot. 45d; KB27/689, rex rot. 17d; Add. Ch. 47061.

In the mid 1440s Knightley was put to the expense of several distraints on his failure to answer two important plaintiffs on pleas of trespass: one sued by Lionel, Lord Welles, and the other by Simon Kynnesman† of Loddington. Such actions explain why, as ‘of Northampton, baker alias baxter’, he sued out a general pardon on 1 Sept. 1446.8 KB27/731, rot. 52d; 735, rot. 52; 736, rots. 46d, 76; 738, rot. 15; C67/39, m. 25. Welles, however, proved a determined litigant. His action was pending from at least early 1444 to late 1448, when it disappears from the plea rolls. During this time Knightley produced several leading townsmen, including Richard Wilscotes* and Thomas Deraunt*, to offer mainprise on his behalf.9 KB27/744, rot. 5; 745, rot. 18; 748, rot. 58; 750, rot. 81d. What he had done to arouse Welles’s hostility does not appear, but his election as mayor in 1449 shows that his standing in the town was unaffected. He did not long survive his term of office. He was dead by Michaelmas term 1455 when his widow and executrix had a plea pending against a husbandman of East Haddon, a few miles to the north-west of Northampton, for a debt of as much as 26 marks. She was still alive ten years later when still pursuing men of East Haddon for debt.10 CP40/779, rot. 266; 817, rot. 457.