KNOLLYS, Sir Francis II (c.1592-1643), of Abbey House, Reading, Berks.

The death of his unmarried elder brother, Robert†, in 1626 had made Sir Francis Knollys II their father’s heir. But, as a result of Sir Francis Knollys I’s extraordinary longevity, he too would never inherit. Another consequence of that longevity was that it was only in the late 1630s that Sir Francis II began to emerge as much of a county figure in Berkshire. It is true that as early as the 1620s Sir Francis II had benefited from his father’s influence at Reading to sit for that constituency in the four most recent Parliaments. But, apart from his appointment as a sewers commissioner, he had so far not gained any local offices to match those held by his father.

Knollys again had to rely on his father’s influence to get elected at Reading in 1640, with the two of them together sitting very briefly in the Short Parliament following the by-election there, and both being re-elected for those same seats that autumn. Moreover, once they were elected, the Commons’ Journals for the Long Parliament do not always distinguish between them. But, in view of his father’s great age, it seems reasonable to assume that most of these ambiguous entries refer to the son and it is certainly the case that most of the unambiguous entries refer to Sir Francis II. Even so, the younger Sir Francis was never especially active in this Parliament. One of them was named to the committee for the conference with the House of Lords as early as 10 November 1640 and later that month the two of them offered £1,000 towards the security for the £100,000 loan from London to help pay the armies in the north.14CJ ii. 25b; Procs. LP i. 229, 232, 235, 238. Given his wife’s Kentish connections, it seems more likely that it was Sir Francis II who on 4 December spoke on behalf of those petitioners who wished to challenge the result of the Kent election.15Procs. LP i. 458. Both took the Protestation, but separately, either on 3 or 13 May 1641.16CJ ii. 133a, 145a; Procs. LP iv. 358, 365. In late August 1641 Sir Francis II was the messenger to the Lords to request conferences concerning the case of Sir John Corbet*.17CJ ii. 271b, 274b, 275a; LJ iv. 382a; Procs. LP vi. 610. Since he was certainly present in the Commons that day, he was presumably the MP added to the committee on St Andrew’s Holborn on 30 August after the bill to create a new parish in Wapping was referred to it.18CJ ii. 277a. When in May 1642 Henry Marten* delivered a petition against a Dr Lloyd, who may have been Richard Lloyd, the vicar of Tilehurst, Berkshire, Knollys spoke in Lloyd’s defence.19PJ i. 368.

Once it became apparent that a civil war could not be avoided, Knollys clearly sided with Parliament. In June 1642 his father informed the Commons that the pair would each supply Parliament with two horses.20PJ iii. 467. On 22 August Sir Francis II was one of three local MPs (Henry Marten* and Peregrine Hoby* being the other two) who were appointed to oversee the military preparations in Berkshire.21LJ v. 311a-312b. Five weeks later he and Hoby were sent by the Commons to encourage the collection of taxes in Berkshire.22CJ ii. 788b; Add. 18777, f. 16v. It is also more likely that it was Sir Francis II than his father, who was included on the committee appointed on 20 October to deliver letters to the corporation of London, and who was sent back to Berkshire to assist with military mobilisation there later that same month.23CJ ii. 817b, 824a. In the meantime he had, on behalf of the Commons, invited Thomas Temple to preach before them on 26 October.24CJ ii. 787a, 824a; T. Temple, Christ’s Government in and over his People (1642). (As brother of Sir John*, Temple was one of Knollys’s distant relatives.) He was probably also the one who played a leading part in the appointment of commissaries for valuing horses to assist in the raising of cavalry forces for the parliamentarian army.25CJ ii. 841a, 843b, LJ v. 447a; Add. 18777, f. 54v. On 31 December a Knollys offered to give Parliament an unspecified sum of money, although two weeks later it was noted that a Knollys, presumably the other, had offered no money.26Add. 18777, ff. 109v, 124v.

That one of them was having difficulty in offering financial assistance to Parliament was only understandable. In November 1642 royalist forces commanded by Sir Arthur Aston had taken control of Reading. The Knollys estates were therefore in royalist hands. Knollys and his father now allowed their personal distress to be used by others at Westminster. On 27 March 1643 John Pym* moved the bill for seizing the estates of delinquents. Sir Francis II then told the Commons of how Aston had been forcing the Knollys tenants to hand him their rents. Much was probably made of Sir Francis I’s great age. A conference was then arranged with the Lords so that Knollys II could repeat this story as an encouragement to their lordships to agree to the proposed legislation.27Harl. 164, f. 344v; CJ iii. 21a. He was included as one of the Berkshire commissioners in the resulting ordinance.28A. and O. The following month Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, (who was Knollys’s cousin once removed) began to beseige Reading. Knollys was one of the MPs sent to see him on 19 April to ask what supplies he required.29CJ iii. 52a; Harl. 164, f. 373. Reading fell to Essex the following week. On 3 May Knollys and Tanfield Vachell* (a distant relatives and one of the candidates he had defeated in 1640) were given the job of checking that the ordinance for weekly assessments was being implemented in Berkshire.30LJ vi. 29a. As parts of the county were still in royalist hands, this would not have been a straightforward task.

But, however difficult, this was a task Knollys never got the chance to carry out. Within the fortnight he was dead. He was buried at Reading in St Laurence’s on 17 May.31St Laurence, Reading par. reg.; Coates, Reading, 230. When his widow joined with his father in petitioning Parliament in 1644, it would appear that it was claimed that Sir Francis II had died ‘in service of Parliament’.32Harl. 166, f. 46. Knollys would seem to have left no will. His widow continued to live in part of Abbey House at Reading and, when Sir Francis I died in 1648, he left her those rooms as a life interest.33PROB11/204/208. She died in 1677.34Coates, Reading, 231, 385.