KNIGHTLEY, Richard (c.1610-61), of Fawsley and Preston, Northants., and King Street, Covent Garden, London.

Background and early parliamentary career

The Knightleys had settled in Staffordshire by the 1180s, acquiring Burgh Hall, Gnosall, by marriage in the late fourteenth century and purchasing the manor of Fawsley, in Northamptonshire, in Henry V’s reign.34VCH Northants. Fams. 169, 170, 173, 177, 178, 180; HP Commons, 1386-1421, ‘Richard Knightley’. The Knightleys of Fawsley had quickly established themselves as one of the foremost families in the county and had represented Northamptonshire in Parliament on nearly a dozen occasions since 1420.35VCH Northants. Fams. 170; HP Commons, 1386-1421, ‘Richard Knightley’; HP Commons 1509-1558, ‘Richard Knightley’; HP Commons 1559-1603, ‘Sir Richard Knightley’; ‘Valentine Knightley’; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Richard Knightley’. Knightley belonged to a cadet branch that had inherited the family’s manors in Staffordshire and Worcestershire in the 1560s. His father, Richard Knightley senior, succeeded to Fawsley in 1639 on the death of his cousin and namesake, who had been among the leading ‘opposition’ Members in the 1620s Parliaments and a close friend and political ally of the future parliamentarian grandees William Fiennes, 1st Viscount Saye and Sele, John Crewe I*, John Hampden* and John Pym*.36Northants. RO, K.III.37-8, 40, 42, 45; K.IV.54; K.IX.107; K.XXXVI.394; VCH Northants. Fams. 171-2, 186, 188; HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Richard Knightley’. Both Knightley senior and junior shared the reformist and godly convictions of their deceased kinsman and his circle. Knightley senior, as the preface to his will confirms, was a thorough-going Calvinist, and the younger Knightley (the future MP) made his own religious and political sympathies clear with his marriage in 1640 to a daughter of John Hampden.37PROB11/215, f. 42v; J.T. Cliffe, The Puritan Gentry, 92; Puritans in Conflict, 36-7; J. Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the Church Courts: the Diocese of Peterborough 1603-42’ (Birmingham Univ. PhD thesis, 1989), 15-17, 31, 48, 49, 218.

In the elections to the Short Parliament in the spring of 1640, the puritan stronghold of Northampton returned ‘Richard Knightley junior’ – not Knightley senior, as is sometimes assumed – and another godly local gentleman, Zouche Tate.38Supra, ‘Northampton’; C219/42/1/158; Diary of Robert Woodford ed. J. Fielding (Cam. Soc. 5th ser. xlii), 347. Knightley’s only recorded contribution to this Parliament’s proceedings was to present a petition from the town to the Commons on 18 April, protesting against Laudian religious innovations, Ship Money and other ‘undue impositions’, and calling for annual Parliaments.39CJ ii. 6a; Aston’s Diary, 12; Procs. Short Parl. 158, 275. That September, the ‘knights and gentry’ of Northamptonshire chose Knightley and one of the county’s MPs Sir Gilbert Pykeringe to present their petition ‘about grievances’ to the king, which was drawn up in support of a group of disaffected peers and gentlemen – of which Saye, Pym and Hampden were prominent members – that was pressing Charles to summon a new Parliament.40Woodford Diary ed. Fielding, 369. The election at Northampton to the Long Parliament in October resulted in a contest and a double return. The godly majority in the corporation re-elected Tate and Knightley, but 200 or so of the freemen drew up an indenture of their own, returning Tate, but rejecting Knightley in favour of another local gentleman.41Supra, ‘Northampton’. On 6 January 1641 the House resolved that Tate and Knightley be allowed to sit on a provisional basis – that is, until their return should be declared void – but this would be the first and last action that the Commons took in relation to this dispute, thereby confirming their election by default.42Supra, ‘Northampton’; CJ ii. 63b.

Knightley’s career in the Long Parliament, like Tate’s, began slowly. He was named to only four committees before the autumn 1641 recess and made no recorded contribution on the floor of the House except to take the Protestation in May.43CJ ii. 91a, 102b, 133a, 197a, 277a. During a series of divisions on 22 November 1641 concerning the Grand Remonstrance, he was a majority teller with the godly Sir Walter Erle against including the word ‘published’ in an order for prohibiting the printing of the Remonstrance without the House’s permission – a victory that left open the possibility that it could be circulated freely in manuscript form.44CJ ii. 322b. The assertion that he was a leading figure in securing the Remonstrance’s passage through the House is completely without foundation.45Hexter, King Pym, 161. Either Knightley or his father were among a group of Northamptonshire gentry that petitioned the Commons on 21 January 1642, requesting (among other things) that ‘the votes of popish lords and bishops’ be removed, the court purged of evil counsellors, papists disarmed, the militia put in safe hands and ‘scandalous ministers outed’.46The Petition of the Knights, Gentlemen, and Free-holders of the county of North-hampton (1642, E.135.36); Fielding, ‘Conformists, Puritans, and the Church Courts’, 254. Four days later (25 Jan.), Knightley was named to a committee in the Commons to investigate the threat of rumoured designs against Parliament in London and other places.47CJ ii. 396a. Prompted by the Commons, Parliament’s lord lieutenant of Northamptonshire under the Militia Ordinance, Henry, 3rd Baron Spencer, commissioned Knightley as one of his deputy lieutenants at some point during the spring of 1642.48CJ ii. 483b.

Knightley was named to four Commons committees during mid-1642 (to several of them, it seems, in absentia), but his most significant appointment came on 8 June, when he secured a Commons order for sending only those Members such as himself who were also Northamptonshire deputy lieutenants into the county to oversee the execution of the Militia Ordinance, ‘lest the House should be left too thin’.49CJ ii. 557b, 576b, 612a, 614a, 631a, 634a; PJ iii. 41, 85. Before departing for Northamptonshire on this mission, he pledged to bring in £100 and two horses on the propositions for supplying the proposed parliamentary army under Robert Devereux, 3rd earl of Essex, and he would duly supply the earl’s commissary with ‘two able bay horses’, complete with riders, their armour and equipment, worth an estimated £58 (his father contributed £171 in plate and £150 in money to Parliament’s war-chest).50PJ iii. 471; SP28/131, pt. 3, f. 25; SP28/172, pt. 3, unfol. On 9 August, in response to a letter from a group of Parliament’s leading supporters in Northamptonshire, the Commons appointed Knightley, Tate, Crewe and other Commons-men as a committee for the county, with instructions to continue the work of executing the Militia Ordinance there.51CJ ii. 711a. Knightley may have returned to the Commons by 10 August, when he was added to a committee for receiving contributions for Ireland’s Protestants.52CJ ii. 713a. On 20 August, he informed the Commons that Sir Christopher Hatton*, Sir Robert Hatton*, Geoffrey Palmer* and Sir Robert Napier* were providing horses for the king’s army, and he successfully moved that they might be summoned to attend the House.53CJ ii. 719b, 729a; PJ iii. 311. Knightley’s connection with Hampden and, through him, with other members of the Westminster ‘junto’ may have had some bearing on his decision to side with Parliament in the civil war, but there is scant evidence that it decisively shaped his parliamentary career at any point during the early 1640s.

Between the parliamentary factions, 1642-5

Knightley’s appointments in the Commons during late 1642 and early 1643 suggest that he was generally supportive of Parliament’s war effort and favoured measures for defending Northamptonshire against the royalists (Fawsley lay just a few miles from the border with royalist-dominated Oxfordshire). Between early September 1642 and early February 1643 he was named to 18 committees and two conference-reporting teams, served twice as a messenger to the Lords and was a teller in one, apparently non-partisan, division (4 Feb. 1643).54CJ ii. 756a, 789a, 797a, 817b, 825b, 863b, 870a, 875a, 878a, 882a, 890a, 890b, 903b, 909a, 919a, 925a, 928b, 929a, 945b, 951a, 955b; LJ v. 471b, 554b. His contributions to debate during this period appear to have been infrequent and of little moment.55Harl. 164, f. 270v; Add. 18777, f. 102v. He seems to have kept his own counsel in the prolonged debates during the winter of 1642-3 concerning whether to seek an accommodation with the king and on what terms. He was closely involved in efforts to secure Northamptonshire and Leicestershire for Parliament, and he played an important role in the establishment late in 1642 of the East Midlands Association – an initiative that was warmly supported by the ‘fiery spirits’ in the Commons.56Supra, ‘Thomas Lord Grey of Groby’; CJ ii. 756a, 797a, 875a, 882a, 890a, 890b, 903b, 909a, 929a. Moreover, when it was moved on 31 December that all Members ‘shall presently declare themselves what they will lend or give to the maintenance of the army’, he offered to bring in £50.57Add. 18777, f. 109v. But there is very little to indicate that he was closely aligned with, or privy to the counsels of, Pym, Hampden and other war-party grandees. Indeed, on 22 December he spoke against a motion by Pym that the earl of Dunfermline be dismissed as one of the Scots commissioners for having allegedly fought on the king’s side at the battle of Edgehill.58Harl. 164, f. 270v.

Knightley received only one committee appointment between early February and mid-July 1643 – a period complicated for him by the deaths in quick succession of his father-in-law and of his wife – although he was present in the House on 6 June to take the vow and covenant.59CJ iii. 73a, 118b. He also attended meetings of Parliament’s standing Committee for Irish Affairs in mid-February and again late in April.60Add. 4782, ff. 83v, 89, 95; SP16/539/127, f. 21. Between mid-July and mid-August he was named to five committees in the Commons and served twice as a messenger to the Lords – on the first occasion to carry up (among other things) an ordinance for raising money and forces in Northamptonshire; and on the second, to desire the Lords’ concurrence with additions to the county’s sequestrations committee.61CJ iii. 171a, 173b, 174b, 186a, 188b, 189b, 196b, 203b; LJ vi. 136b, 160b. Perhaps his most revealing appointment during these weeks was to a 22-man committee set up on 29 July in reaction to an attempt by Pym to interest the Commons in propositions from the lord general for the supply of his army.62Supra, ‘Committee of Safety’; CJ iii. 186a. Rather than gratify Pym and the lord general, ‘many considerable men’ inveighed against the Committee of Safety – Parliament’s military executive – ‘as the cause of all those miseries which afflict the kingdom’ and demanded that it be dissolved

And when that could not be effected, it was proposed and carried at the last by the major part that a committee should be nominated to take an accompt of the close committee [the Committee of Safety] and of all others which were trusted with receipts or disbursements of money; and that none of the close committee, nor any which had fingered any of the public monies, was to have a voice in it.63Mercurius Aulicus no. 32 (6-12 Aug. 1643), 424-5.

This committee for ‘public money’ was indeed dominated by peace-minded MPs and those not compromised by close involvement with the war-party grandees. On 7 August, Knightley was named to a committee for investigating allegations that Pym, Sir Gilbert Gerard* and other leading war-party figures had sent money abroad in the event of defeat at home.64CJ iii. 196b.

It is again revealing that having played no part in initiatives that summer to forge a military alliance with the Scots, Knightley took a back seat in the Commons while it busied itself finalising the Solemn League and Covenant. Although he was present in the House on 15 September 1643 and was included on John Rushworth’s* list of Members who took the Covenant ten days later (25 Sept.) in St Margaret’s church, Westminster, he received no committee appointments between mid-August and mid-October 1643.65Add. 18778, f. 44; Rushworth, Hist. Collns. v. 481. However, he made his continuing commitment to the parliamentarian cause clear that autumn, when he, Sir John Driden* and Philip Holman* contributed £100 between them to the war effort.66SP28/172, pt. 3, unfol. In December, he was among the ten prominent Commons-men who served as pall-bearers at the funeral of John Pym.67Perfect Diurnall no. 21 (11-18 Dec. 1643), 165 (E.252.11).

Knightley attended the Commons regularly between mid-October 1643 and December 1645 – when he apparently took a few weeks unofficial leave of absence – receiving a mention in the Journals every month and appointment either as a committeeman, messenger to the Lords, or teller in all but March 1644. In total, he was named to approximately 96 committees during this period, served as a messenger on seven occasions and as a teller in four divisions.68CJ iii. 294a, 339a, 342a, 342b, 513a, 705b; iv. 51a, 193a, 193b, 233a, 255b, 261a; LJ vi. 338b, 340b, 574b; vii. 201a, 529b, 555b, 563a. A conscientious and apparently trusted member of the House, he was given or assumed the chair of at least four committees in 1643-5 – the committee for reformadoes (disbanded officers); a committee to resolve disputes in Leicestershire between the county committee and the forces of the East Midlands Association under Thomas Lord Grey of Groby*; a committee to address divisions of a similar nature in Surrey; and the committee for prisoners, which handled the exchange or release of imprisoned royalists.69CJ iii. 424a, 467b, 487b, 507b, 532a, 538a, 538b, 548a, 558b, 628a, 647a, 701a, 716b; iv. 20a, 78b, 171a, 243b, 318a, 356a, 389b; LJ vii. 8b, 511a; Luke Letter Bks. 570-1, 582, 620. He may also have chaired, and certainly reported from (Dec. 1643), a committee to maintain the parliamentarian garrison at Aylesbury, Buckinghamshire and to establish a garrison at nearby Newport Pagnell.70CJ iii. 321b, 335a, 342a, 342b. That both of these garrisons were in the earl of Essex’s sphere of military influence may be significant, for Knightley seems to have shown at least a fleeting concern to defend the lord general’s authority from encroachment by his great rival Sir William Waller*. Thus on 30 October, he clashed with Waller’s interest in the House as a teller in a division concerning the governorship of Portsmouth – an office held by commission from Essex that Sir Arthur Hesilrige and some of the ‘western men’ wanted bestowed upon Waller.71CJ iii. 294a; Harl. 165, f. 199; Mercurius Aulicus no. 44 (29 Oct.-4 Nov. 1643), 628 (E.75.37). Knightley’s fellow teller on this occasion was once again Sir Walter Erle, who seems to have been a particular friend of Knightley’s at Westminster and his principal associate in administering payments to reformadoes.72CJ iii. 399a, 464a, 538a; iv. 20a; LJ vi. 338b, 524b; vii. 8b; Harl. 166, f. 105.

Although Knightley was linked to the Devereux family by marriage and would himself marry (in 1647) the widow of Essex Devereux, son of the 3rd earl’s cousin Sir Walter Devereux†, there are no grounds for accounting him among the lord general’s closest friends at Westminster.73HP Commons 1604-1629, ‘Sir Walter Devereux’. Nevertheless, it is noteworthy that he was only peripherally involved, if at all, in the causes that animated Essex’s leading enemies during late 1643 and early 1644 – notably, the prosecution of the earl’s turncoat cousin Henry Rich, 1st earl of Holland; the consolidation of Parliament’s alliance with the Scots; and the setting up of the Committee of Both Kingdoms (CBK).74CJ iii. 304a, 404b. Knightley’s seeming indifference to the creation of the CBK stands in marked contrast to the prominent role played by his fellow Northamptonshire MPs John Crewe I and Zouche Tate in the committee’s establishment.75Supra, ‘Committee of Both Kingdoms’. If his appointments to ad hoc committees during the period 1643-5 are any guide, he was involved in managing the excise revenues, supplying Parliament’s forces (particularly those in London, southern England and the midlands), and in resolving disputes between its civilian and military authorities in Leicestershire, Surrey, Nottinghamshire and several other counties.76CJ iii. 275a, 309b, 333a, 342a, 455b, 467b, 489a, 507b, 517a, 520b, 521a, 551b, 579b, 602a, 602b, 607a, 654b, 666b, 669a, 676a, 679a, 681b, 688a; iv. 38a, 75a, 107a, 112a, 118b, 146a, 163a, 183b, 207a, 235a, 275a, 286a; HMC Portland, i. 184. He may also have contributed to the House’s efforts to promote godly reformation, the maintenance of the ministry, and the establishment of Presbyterian church government in the diocese of London.77CJ iii. 271b, 566b, 579b; iv. 35b, 218a, 276a, 312a.

Unfortunately, Knightley’s numerous appointments during the mid-1640s to request ministers to preach before the House or to thank them for their efforts, although attesting to his appetite for godly sermons, shed little light on his devotional and ecclesiological preferences. With the notable exception of the ‘Covenant-engaged’ Simeon Ashe, whose services the House ordered Knightley to request in October 1646, the majority of these ministers were undistinguished, Presbyterian members of the Westminster Assembly.78CJ iii. 682a, 707a; iv. 225a, 254b, 326a, 600b, 683b, 694b; v. 283b, 344a; Oxford DNB, ‘Simeon Ashe’. That Knightley probably did not share Ashe’s enthusiasm for the establishment of ‘rigid’, Scottish-style Presbyterianism in England is suggested by his majority tellership with Walter Long on 26 November 1644 against retaining a clause in the Directory of Worship that the sacrament should be administered ‘as in the church of Scotland’. The minority tellers were the ‘Scottified’ Presbyterians, Sir Robert Harley and Sir Anthony Irby.79CJ iii. 705b.

Although clearly among the more active and high-profile Commons-men by late 1644, Knightley was an inconspicuous figure during the debates and machinations at Westminster surrounding the Self-Denying Ordinance and the early stages of new modelling Parliament’s armies. With allegations flying around London of incompetence, and worse, against Essex and other senior military figures, the only officer whose conduct Knightley is known to have complained about was the Scottish mercenary Colonel Sir John Urry (or Hurry) – a man who had already changed sides twice and whom Knightley blamed for John Hampden’s death at Chalgrove Field the previous year.80Harl. 166, f. 151; Add. 31116, p. 344. It was perhaps Knightley’s eschewal of partisan politics that recommended him for nomination on 8 January 1645 to a four-man committee for questioning the earls of Essex and Manchester over their perceived failure to obey orders from the CBK concerning troop dispositions. Essex’s answer, which was submitted in writing, was reported to the House by Knightley on 10 January.81CJ iv. 13b, 16a; Add. 31116, p. 370. By the time Knightley began to receive appointments in relation to recruiting and supplying the New Model – that is, in mid-February 1645 – the re-organization of Parliament’s armies and the replacement of Essex with Sir Thomas Fairfax* had been all but accomplished. On 22 February, the Commons entrusted him with overseeing the collection of assessments for the New Model in Northamptonshire – an order repeated in June – but this employment, assuming he undertook it, may have represented his only substantial contribution to the process of new modelling.82CJ iv. 51a, 59b, 71a, 186a; LJ vii. 201a. His involvement in the Savile affair seems to have consisted in nothing more than his appointment to one of the committees set up that summer to investigate this controversy.83CJ iv. 173a.

On 1 July, Knightley was nominated with Erle, Tate and 14 other Commons-men to the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs – a standing, bicameral committee that was dominated initially by Sir John Clotworthy and other prominent Presbyterians.84CJ iv. 191a; Supra, ‘Irish Committees’. Knightley attended this committee on a regular basis, regardless of changes in its factional complexion (the Independents would gain a majority on the committee in the spring of 1646).85Supra, ‘Irish Committees’; CSP Ire. 1633-47, pp. 405, 749. The same day as his nomination to the Star Chamber committee (1 July 1645), he clashed with prominent Presbyterians in the House as a teller in two relatively minor and apparently non-partisan divisions. In the first, he partnered another nominee to the committee, the future regicide John Moore, in opposing a request from the Lords for the release of one of the Spanish ambassador’s servants who was suspected of being a priest. The minority tellers were Sir Philip Stapilton and Sir John Curzon.86CJ iv. 193a; LJ vii. 469a. In the second division, Knightley and Sir Richard Onslow – who was himself loosely aligned with the Presbyterian interest at Westminster – were majority tellers in favour of amendments made by the Lords to an ordinance for the defence of Surrey. The minority tellers this time round were Stapilton and another of the Presbyterian grandees, Denzil Holles.87CJ iv. 193b.

Knightley’s appointments during the summer and autumn of 1645 were a mixed bag and reveal no pattern that would suggest any consistent factional allegiance on his part. Thus he was named to committees for supplying the New Model army, investigating complaints by the Scots against the Cumberland MP Richard Barwis and – with the Presbyterian grandees Clotworthy and Holles – for pressing the Scottish forces in Ulster to return Belfast to English control (13 Nov.).88CJ iv. 239a, 264b, 273a, 276a, 299a, 340b. Rather than belonging to some mythical ‘middle group’ in the Commons, he can be numbered among that small group of prominent Parliament-men who avoided partisan politics except insofar as their own agendas happened to coincide with those of the ‘engaged grandees’. His lack of factional bias is perhaps evident in his failure to accrue the kind of offices and perquisites that generally came the way of Parliament-men with strong connections to the party – and especially the Independent – leaders.89Supra, ‘Committee for the Revenue’. Nevertheless, if royalist allegations can be credited, he used his position as chairman of the committee for prisoners to exact thousands of pounds in ransom money for the captives in his charge, whom he ‘tyrannis’d over with inhumane cruelty, many of them starv’d and famished to death and others choked up and destroyed with noisome smells and cold’.90Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 11 (23-30 Nov. 1647), 79-80 (E.417.21). To what extent, if any, he profited as chairman if this committee is impossible to say, but he was certainly keen to detain royalists (presumably in less than comfortable conditions) who had maltreated parliamentarian prisoners.91Luke Letter Bks. 570-1.

Parliamentary career, 1646-8

Knightley continued to steer his own political course at Westminster during 1646, even as the rivalry between the Presbyterians and Independents intensified over the inter-related issues of the Newcastle peace propositions, custody of the king, and the deployment and supply of military forces in England and Ireland. If, as it appears, he spent time away from Parliament late in 1645, he had returned to the House by early January 1646 and would receive regular mention in the Journals thereafter until late March 1647, when he took leave of absence.92CJ iv. 399a; v. 129b. During that period, he was named to 58 committees and two conference-reporting teams and served as a messenger to the Lords on four occasions and as a teller in three divisions.93CJ iv. 474a, 475b, 510a, 511b, 521a, 545a, 676b, 722b; v. 25b, 49a, 63b; LJ viii. 210b, 276b-277a, 665a. He also assumed the chair of a committee for improving security in the Tower and overseeing the custody of its prisoners.94CJ iv. 399a; v. 216b, 217a, 221b, 295a; LJ ix. 79b. A significant proportion of these appointments related to the House’s dealings with the Scots, raising money for the English and Scottish armies in England, and to settling a godly ministry in London and the localities.95CJ iv. 462a, 472b, 540a, 587a, 625b, 632a, 650b, 663a, 676b, 708a, 714b, 738a; v. 8b, 49a, 52b, 100a, 119b; LJ viii. 665a. He was apparently prominent in, and certainly reported from, committees for satisfying the army arrears of the Presbyterian-leaning Leicestershire peer, Henry Grey*, 1st earl of Stamford (6 May); raising £100,000 to pay off the Scottish army in England (26 Aug.); and on complaints concerning the breach of the Oxford surrender articles (3 Nov.).96CJ iv. 271a, 535b, 713a. And in December he reported from a conference with the Lords concerning a foiled attempt to abduct the duke of York.97CJ v. 25b, 27a. But none of these employments would have propelled him to the forefront of political controversy or partisan rivalry at Westminster.

The one important area of policy in which Knightley figured prominently during the mid-1640s, and where he perhaps ventured closest to the party-political fray before 1647, was the management of the war in Ireland. He made three reports from the Star Chamber Committee of Irish Affairs in 1646 and was a teller in two divisions in April and May concerning the supply of Parliament’s forces in Ireland.98CJ iv. 521a, 545a, 555a, 676b, 679a, 697b, 702b. The first of these divisions was apparently a non-partisan contest that pitted Knightley and the Anglo-Irish grandee and friend of the Independents, Sir John Temple, against the Independents Sir Henry Mildmay and John Moore.99CJ iv. 521a. But in the second division, Knightley and Mildmay squared up to the Presbyterian grandees Clotworthy and Holles in opposition to a recommendation reported by Stapilton from the CBK in favour of Clotworthy’s friend, the military contractor John Davies*.100Supra, ‘Irish Committees’; CJ iv. 545a. On 4 January 1647, Knightley was named to a six-man committee that consisted entirely of Members who were either allies of the Presbyterian grandees or who would shortly become so, ‘for settling the same form of church government in the kingdom of Ireland as is, or shall be, established in the kingdom of England’.101CJ v. 40b. The establishment of this committee may have represented an implicit denial of the Scots’ right to intervene in Irish affairs or a statement of Presbyterian religious intent, or both. But more revealing than Knightley’s assignments and employments during 1646 is his absence from the stage at moments of the highest political drama. He was largely an onlooker, it seems, in the battles at Westminster over the Newcastle propositions, the ‘Covenant-engaged’ campaign for a Presbyterian church settlement, custody of the king, and the alleged abuses committed by the Scottish army in northern England.102CJ iv. 474a, 475b, 511a, 540a, 587a; LJ viii. 210b.

Knightley was involved during the winter of 1646-7 in addressing the problems created by the refusal of the Presbyterian majority in the Lords to renew the ordinances for continuing the Committee for the Army* and the monthly assessment. On 11 January, the Commons sent him as a messenger to the Lords to impress upon the peers ‘the important great necessity of the speeding passing’ of this legislation, ‘long since sent to their lordships’.103CJ v. 49a; LJ viii. 665a. And during January and February he chaired and reported from a committee of the whole House for taking the accounts of the soldiery and satisfying their arrears of pay – administrative tasks that required more urgent attention from the House in the absence of a fully-functioning Army Committee.104Supra, ‘Committee for the Army’; CJ v. 61a, 69a, 85a; Add. 31116, pp. 596, 598, 602. These employments are less interesting in themselves, however, than his likely motives for seeking or accepting them. He may have shared the concern of the Independents to maintain the army on grounds of political and military necessity, or, more likely, he may have regarded the expediting of military supply and administration as a necessary preliminary to achieving the Presbyterians’ objective of downsizing the army and sending it to Ireland. His selection on 25 January as a reporter of a conference with the Lords – on the Scots’ desires concerning arrangements for handing over the king to Parliament – certainly suggests that he was on closer terms by this point with the Presbyterians than with the Independents, for his fellow reporters were four leading Presbyterians: Holles, Stapilton, Sir William Lewis and Harbottle Grimston.

Granted leave of absence on 29 March 1647, Knightley may have spent the next few weeks working out the financial arrangements for his marriage to Essex Devereux’s widow. The parties to the marriage settlement, which was signed on 20 April, included the Parliament-men Henry Grey, 10th earl of Kent, William Purefoy I, Humphrey Salwey and Robert Wallop, who were all Independents.105CJ v. 129b; Cheshire RO, DAR/F/17. He had returned to the House by 5 May, when he was a majority teller with another prominent Presbyterian, Walter Long, against excluding composition fines as security on a £200,000 City loan to fund the Presbyterians’ drive to pay off and disband the army. The minority tellers were the Independent grandee Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire and the Independent-aligned John Boys.106CJ v. 163b.

Knightley’s support for the Presbyterians emerged even more clearly at the end of May 1647, when he was named to a bicameral committee, headed by the earl of Warwick, to repair to Chelmsford, where a general rendezvous had been appointed to begin the disbandment process.107CJ v. 192b; Juxon Jnl. 157. Knightley was an active member of this committee, signing at least one of its letters to Parliament from Chelmsford.108Add. 31116, p. 621; Mems. of the Great Civil War ed. Cary, i. 219-20. The majority of his other 16 committee appointments between early May and the Presbyterian ‘riots’ at Westminster of 26 July were less obviously partisan in nature.109CJ v. 162b, 166a, 167a, 171b, 200a, 205a, 218b, 220b, 221b, 228a, 229a, 232a, 237b, 250a, 251b, 253a. As chairman by mid-1647 of the committee for petitions, for example, he handled business involving ‘officers, soldiers, women [including war widows], Irish Protestants and other poor distressed people’ – in other words, suitors without political connections at Westminster.110CJ v. 254b, 267a. However, on 23 June and again on 19 July, he was appointed firstly with William Ashhurst and secondly with Sir Robert Harley to obtain permission from Sir Thomas Fairfax for Colonel John Birch* to convey his regiment to Ireland – a provocative assignment given that Fairfax and the Independents suspected that Birch was intent on mobilizing forces against the army.111Supra, ‘John Birch’; CJ v. 220b, 250a. Less controversially, Knightley and William Wheler were put in charge of a committee set up on 3 July for perusing the Commons’ records in order to provide clear instructions to Parliament’s commissioners with the army.112CJ v. 232a.

Having remained at Westminster following the ‘riots’ of 26 July 1647, Knightley and the Presbyterian trio of Sir Walter Erle, Sir Robert Pye I and Thomas Gewen were sent to Speaker Lenthall’s house on 30 July to request his attendance in the Commons, but returned with the news that he had departed London (Lenthall had joined those Parliament-men, mostly Independents, who had taken refuge with the army).113CJ v. 259b. That same day (30 July), he was named to a committee tasked with warning the army not to come within 30 miles of London.114CJ v. 259b. And on 3 August, he was added to the ‘committee of safety’ that both Houses had established on 11 June to join with the City militia for mobilising London against Fairfax’s forces.115CJ v. 207b, 266a; Juxon Jnl. 159. Yet despite acquiescing in the Presbyterian counter-revolution of late July 1647, Knightley remained at Westminster following the army’s occupation of London early in August. Indeed, he was named to five committees during the ensuing months for repealing the votes passed after the ‘forcing’ of the Houses and to investigate the ringleaders.116CJ v. 269a, 272a, 278a, 322a, 367a. But as his tellership with Francis Drake on 19 August reveals, he favoured an account of events on 26 July that down-played the affront that had been offered to MPs. The opposing view was represented by the majority tellers: the Independent grandees Evelyn of Wiltshire and Edmund Prideaux I.117CJ v. 279a.

The 16 months between the army’s march into London in August 1647 and its own forcing of the Commons at Pride’s Purge, in December 1648, would prove to be one of the busiest in Knightley’s parliamentary career. During this period he was named to approximately 78 committees and seven conference-reporting teams and served as a messenger to the Lord on eight occasions and as a teller in ten divisions.118CJ v. 279a, 286b, 319a-b, 322b, 337a, 345b, 346b, 370a, 428b, 448a, 451a, 467a, 474a, 537a, 538b, 554b, 602b, 640a, 657a, 664b, 671a; vi. 6b, 7b, 76a, 132; LJ ix. 410b, 452b, 460a, 661b; x. 10b, 208b, 249a, 326a. The parliamentary initiative he was most closely associated with during the autumn of 1647 was the organizing of a national collection for the relief of Protestant refugees from Ireland.119CJ v. 279a, 286b, 309b; LJ ix. 410b, 482a. His other priorities, judging by his appointments, were the redress of the army’s grievances – principally those concerning arrears of pay, indemnity and the provision for maimed soldiers – and preparing peace propositions to the king.120CJ v. 287b, 298b, 320a, 322b, 327b, 340a, 359b, 396a; LJ ix. 460a. On 6 October, he was named to a committee for drafting a proposition ‘concerning the settlement of the Presbyterian government; and concerning the exemption of such tender consciences as cannot conform to that government’.121CJ v. 327b. But the Commons’ deliberations on the propositions were complicated a week or so later when the Lords sent down their own set of peace terms, which were a revised version of the army’s Heads of the Proposals. During the second half of October, therefore, Knightley was involved – as a committeeman and member of conference management and reporting teams – in the wrangling with the Lords that attended the process of ‘reducing the propositions into form’ for dispatch to the king.122CJ v. 336a, 345b, 346b. Anxious to make the propositions more palatable to the king, Knightley was a majority teller with John Swynfen on 20 October in favour of limiting the number of royalists that would receive no pardon as to life to no more than seven.123CJ v. 337a. And on 26 November, he was a majority teller with Arthur Annesley in favour of a proposal from the Lords for dispatching the Four Bills to the king and negotiating on the rest of the propositions at a later date. The minority tellers were the radical Independents, Grey of Groby and Mildmay.124CJ v. 370a. The day after the vote of no addresses, on 4 January 1648, the House set up a large committee – to which Knightley was named – to prepare ordinances for redressing the people’s grievances ‘in relation to their burdens, their freedoms and liberties and of reforming of courts of justice and proceedings at law’.125CJ v. 417a. He seems to have chaired two very minor committees in March.126CJ v. 484b, 486a, 527a. But the main focus of his activities during the early months of 1648 was apparently the House’s continuing efforts to promote further reformation and a godly, tithe-based ministry, and to provide for the needs of the army, maimed soldiers and war widows.127CJ v. 434a, 460b, 486a, 514a, 519a, 522a; LJ ix. 669a.

Knightley’s dedication to the service to the House was acknowledged on 27 January 1648, when it voted to add him to Parliament’s newly-established executive, the Independent-dominated Derby House Committee (DHC) (the Lords declined to consider the matter until its own nominees to the DHC had been accepted by the Commons).128Supra, ‘Derby House Committee’; CJ v. 445b; LJ x. 5b. With the House increasingly anxious not to antagonize the Scots or their friends in England, he was hardly a controversial choice, given that on most issues he apparently remained closer to the Presbyterians than to the Independents. Two days after his nomination, for example, on 29 January, he was a teller with his old colleague Sir Walter Erle in favour of reducing the impeachment charges against one of the Presbyterian peers implicated in the July 1647 riots. The opposing, majority, tellers were the Independents Sir Arthur Hesilrige and Sir William Masham.129CJ v. 448a. A month later (29 Feb.), he was a teller with John Gurdon – a pro-army supporter of a strong Presbyterian church – against passing a declaration to the Scots, justifying Parliament’s recent proceedings concerning the king.130CJ v. 474a; A Declaration of the Lords and Commons Assembled in Parliament (1648, E.432.1).

Knightley’s activities and appointments during the spring and summer of 1648 place him among that influential group of Parliament-men which recognized the necessity of compromising with the City’s Presbyterian leaders and agreeing to a treaty with the king – although not without preconditions – in order to hold London and the kingdom against royalist insurgency and Scottish invasion. In the Commons, his services were regularly enlisted to confer with the City authorities and the Lords on security matters, to settle and maintain Parliament’s armed forces – particularly those of Northamptonshire and the Midlands – and to investigate and punish royalist insurrectionists.131CJ v. 546a, 551a, 558b, 562b, 571a, 574a, 581a, 589a, 590a, 593a, 599b, 602b, 631b, 664a, 664b, 678a, 689a; LJ x. 326a. On 25 May, he reported from a committee that had been sent to the common council to ‘represent unto them the great necessity there is for payment of the arrears due from the City to the army; that they, the Parliament, nor the City can be long safe without a speedy payment of those arrears’.132CJ v. 571a, 572b. That same day (25 May), the Lords finally agreed to his addition to the DHC, although his first report from Derby House seems to have been nine day earlier, on 16 May.133CJ v. 560a, 571a; LJ x. 282a, 283a; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 68. He was part of the DHC’s active core during June, July and August – the height of the second civil war – a group that included Sir John Danvers, Sir John Evelyn of Wiltshire, Sir Gilbert Gerard, William Pierrepont, John Swynfen and Sir John Trevor.134Supra, ‘Derby House Committee’. Knightley made at least nine reports from the DHC during the summer and early autumn – mostly on war-related matters – and at least one from the Committee for Irish Affairs at Star Chamber.135CJ v. 560a, 576b, 598b, 626a, 653a, 655b, 656a, 661a; vi. 20b, 21a; Senate House Lib. GB 0096 AL316; CSP Dom. 1648-9, p. 279.

Knightley’s concern to effect a godly church settlement undoubtedly strengthened his commitment to seeking a treaty with the king, but one held away from London and with preconditions designed to prevent a sell-out peace. Thus on 18 July 1648, he was named with Gerard, Swynfen and other staunch Presbyterians to a conference management team for insisting – contrary to the Lords’ wishes – on the retention of the ‘three propositions’ that Charles must agree to before any personal treaty.136CJ v. 640a. These preconditions included the settlement of Presbyterianism in England for three years. On receiving a petition from the common council early in August, referring to ‘our brethren of Scotland’ and urging an immediate peace, the Commons appointed an eight-man committee, to which Knightley was named in first place, for drafting a reply – which pronounced the invading Scots and their accomplices ‘rebels and traitors’ and demanded the City’s ‘hearty concurrence’ in the war effort.137CJ v. 664a, 665b-666a; I. Gentles, ‘The struggle for London in the second civil war’, HJ xxvi. 298. The experience of working with the Derby House grandees during the second civil war seems to have pushed Knightley closer to the Independents at Westminster, at least temporarily. On 3 August, he reportedly joined the radical Independents Sir Peter Wentworth and John Blakiston in urging that the House declare the prince of Wales ‘a rebel and a traitor’.138[C. Walker], Hist. of Independency (1648), 126 (E.463.19). And on 5 September, he was a minority teller with Sir John Danvers in favour of proceeding with an ordinance for granting the Leveller leader John Lilburne £3,000 in compensation for his imprisonment by the court of star chamber in the late 1630s. The majority tellers were the Presbyterians, Annesley and Clotworthy.139CJ vi. 7b.

Knightley’s contribution to Parliament’s work on the Newport Treaty was neither substantial nor particularly constructive. After the House had received the king’s answers to some of the propositions early in October, Knightley was particularly critical of his religious concessions, arguing that Charles’s ‘episcopal men, instead of advising the further settlement of the church would rather unsettle it by their disputes, and so (perhaps) introduce a new quarrel about it’.140Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28 (3-10 Oct. 1648), sig. Ppv, (E.466.11). On 2 October, Knightley was named with Evelyn of Wiltshire to prepare a letter to Parliament’s commissioners at Newport – a draft of which he reported later that same day – approving of their refusal to negotiate with the king and that they continue instead to press his answer to the propositions, ‘the Houses declaring that they will proceed in that way and not otherwise’.141CJ vi. 41a, 41b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 28, sig. Pp2v. The treaty almost certainly took up less of his time that autumn than business associated with demobilizing and re-organizing the kingdom’s armed forces in the aftermath of the second civil war – issues on which he was not afraid to defy and discontent the army.142CJ vi. 46a, 47b, 76a, 81a, 87a. When, on 14 November, Robert Scawen reported from army headquarters that Fairfax was willing to disband all supernumeraries and remove free quarter if Parliament would agree to recruit and provide pay for a further 3,000 regular troops, Knightley was a majority teller with Annesley against this proposal. The minority tellers were the army’s ‘fast friends’ Sir John Danvers and William Purefoy I.143CJ vi. 76a; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 34 (14-21 Nov. 1648), sig. Bb2v (E.473.7). Concerned by the prospect of the army seizing the king, Knightley was named first to a five-man committee drawn from the ‘moderate party’, on 27 November, for writing to Colonel Robert Hammond*, governor of the Isle of Wight, requiring him to ignore orders from Fairfax’s headquarters that he stand down in favour of the radical officer Colonel Ewer.144CJ vi. 88b; Mercurius Pragmaticus no. 35 (21-8 Nov. 1648), sig. Bbb4v (E.473.35); Gentles, New Model Army, 276-7.

Knightley’s final appointment before Pride’s Purge was on 2 December 1648, when he and the prominent Independent and future Rumper, Algernon Sydney, were minority tellers in favour of bringing candles into the House in order to prolong that day’s debate on whether the king’s answers to the Newport Treaty represented an acceptable basis for settlement.145CJ vi. 132. Calculating that the army’s march into London a few days earlier would influence the debate in their favour, it had been the radical Independents who had pressed hardest for the introduction of candles.146Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 36&37 (5-12 Dec. 1648), sig. Ccc2v (E.476.2); Underdown, Pride’s Purge, 137. Why Knightley had sided with this group is not clear – unless, like Saye’s son-in-law Richard Norton, he had feared that delaying the debate would simply antagonize the army even further.147Infra, ‘Richard Norton’. In the vote on 5 December on whether to accept the king’s answers at Newport, it is almost certain that Knightley joined the majority in favour of the motion- and at Pride’s Purge on 6 December he was not only excluded from the House (like Norton), but was also among those 45 or so Members who suffered imprisonment. His fellow detainees included Crewe, Erle and Swynfen.148Mercurius Pragmaticus nos. 36&37, sig. Ccc3v. Knightley and 15 other MPs were released on 20 December, whereupon he quit national politics and would soon lose his place on the Northamptonshire assessment commission.149Rushworth, Hist. Collns. vii. 1369.

The Protectorate and Restoration

Knightley withdrew from public life under the Rump. At some point in the early 1650s, he and Richard Salwey* purchased part of the forfeited estate of their royalist cousin Sir Edward Littleton* – who was also Knightley’s brother-in-law, having married into the Courteen family – which they held in trust for him.150Staffs. RO, D260/M/T/5/104; CCC, 2082. In the elections to the second protectoral Parliament in the summer of 1656, Knightley stood as a candidate for Northamptonshire, but though he was loudly cried up at the hustings, his supporters were ignored by Major-general William Boteler*, who ‘ordered and managed’ proceedings on election day.151Supra, ‘Northamptonshire’.

Reduced to its traditional two seats for the elections to Richard Cromwell’s Parliament of 1659, Northmaptonshire returned Knightley and another godly gentleman Philip Holman, in that order.152C219/47, unfol. Knightley doubtless owed his election to his considerable proprietorial interest in the county and to his likely opposition to army influence in its affairs. The day after Parliament had assembled, on 28 January, he successfully moved that the renowned Presbyterian divine Thomas Manton – the rector of St Paul’s, Covent Garden, where Knightley’s London residence was located – be one of the preachers to officiate at the forthcoming ‘day of humiliation’, and was appointed to request Manton’s services accordingly.153Burton’s Diary, iii. 11, 67; CJ vii. 594b; Oxford DNB, ‘Thomas Manton’. Named that same day (28 Jan.) to the committee of privileges, he delivered at least three reports to the House concerning disputed election cases.154CJ vii. 594b, 598a, 602a, 612b. In all, he was appointed to ten committees in this Parliament, including those for settling a learned and pious ministry in Wales and the north counties and to draw up an impeachment against Boteler for his conduct as a Cromwellian major-general.155CJ vii. 594b, 600b, 601b, 608b, 609a, 610a, 621a, 622a, 637a. He also chaired at least one session of the Commons standing committee for trade.156Burton’s Diary, iv. 273. The Scottish minister James Sharp included Knightley and Swynfen among the half dozen or so leaders of the Presbyterian interest in the House, ‘who, to avoid the hazard of casting matters into the hands of the republican party or of being brought under the Cavalier power, do sway to the protector’s party’.157Reg. of the Consultations of the Ministers of Edinburgh ed. W. Stephen (Scottish Hist. Soc. ser. 3, xvi), 156. There were indeed occasions in debate when Knightley seconded proposals by Secretary John Thurloe and other prominent ‘courtiers’. On 3 February, for example, following Hesilrige’s motion for a committee to examine military finance, he supported motions by Thurloe and John Maynard that the officers themselves bring in their accounts.158Burton’s Diary, iii. 60.

Yet Knightley was by no means uncritical of the protector or the Humble Petition and Advice, and he evidently shared some of the republicans’ concern to prevent the executive encroaching upon what he considered the legitimate preserves of parliamentary sovereignty.159Little and Smith, Cromwellian Protectorate, 160-1. Moreover, his tendency to judge each issue on its own merits rather than follow a prescribed party line meant that he sometimes favoured the claims of prominent opponents of the government or the perceived victims of Cromwellian injustice – notably, Henry Neville*, John Lilburne and Robert Overton.160Burton’s Diary, iii. 22-3, 46, 509; D. Hirst, ‘Concord and discord in Richard Cromwell’s House of Commons’, EHR ciii. 345. Similarly, rather than simply reject a republican petition presented to the Commons on 9 February – as some court supporters clearly favoured – he offered a compromise solution (which was subsequently adopted) that two or three Members acquaint the petitioners that their cause would be heard as soon as that day’s scheduled debate had concluded.161Burton’s Diary, iii. 152, 154-5. He opened up an even larger gap between himself and the court on 15 February, when he joined the republican grandees Hesilrige and Neville in moving that a group of London ‘Anabaptists’ who had delivered a petition to the Commons in support of the army, receive the thanks of the House (Swynfen, by contrast, cautioned against indulging those seeking after ‘boundless liberty’).162Burton’s Diary, iii. 289, 290. Two days later (17 Feb.), Knightley implied that the protector’s letter to the House on the subject of military spending was not, as Secretary Thurloe would have it, ‘well intended and not to direct you’, but a breach of parliamentary privilege: ‘I wish this [letter] had not come, and desire it may not be again’.163Burton’s Diary, iii. 308-9. On matters of foreign policy – and, specifically, whether to send a fleet to the Sound – he thought the protector and his council should ‘manage the business, because of secrecy, [but] with a salvo – not to prejudice us in the great business of the militia and that it may not extend to give up the liberties of the people, nor be brought into precedent to that purpose’.164Burton’s Diary, iii. 395, 441, 446. While Parliament was sitting, he insisted, ‘the disposing of the militia, by sea and land, is, wholly, in the Parliament’.165Burton’s Diary, iii. 454. His well-deserved reputation as ‘one that was no way influenced by the court’ prompted Hesilrige to nominate him as a temporary replacement for the ailing Speaker Widdrington on 9 March. But Knightley declined this honour on the grounds that he lacked the necessary legal expertise.166Burton’s Diary, iv. 91.

Although Knightley was clearly trusted by some of the republican ‘commonwealthsmen’, his many contributions to the protracted debates on the protectoral settlement reveal his willingness to allow the protector some measure of kingly power, if only as a bulwark against the restoration of the Rump. ‘We have no case to rejoice in a commonwealth’, he declared at one point, ‘a commonwealth was never for the common weal’.167Burton’s Diary, iii. 262. As one of the more experienced parliament-men, with a strong grasp both of procedure and the wider political picture, he often sought to bring clarity of purpose to the House’s proceedings, to cut through the deliberate obfuscation and wishful thinking of the republicans. Confronted by difficult political choices, his motto was the far from revolutionary via recte est via tuta – the right way is the safe way.168Burton’s Diary, iii. 263, 352.

When the bill of recognition (confirming Richard Cromwell as protector) was introduced in the House on 1 February 1659, Knightley regarded it (for reasons he did not make clear) as an unwelcome ‘surprise’, but did not endorse the republicans’ questioning of its constitutional legitimacy: ‘I had not been here if I had not thought his Highness to be chief magistrate. I am sorry to hear such pulling down’.169Burton’s Diary, iii. 29-30. At the second reading of the bill, on 7 February, he opposed moves by the commonwealthsmen to have it picked apart on the floor of the House, urging instead that it be committed without further delay.170Burton’s Diary, iii. 115. Debate on the bill continued, however, and by 9 February he was dismayed ‘to hear that doctrine [favoured by the court party], that the Petition and Advice is the foundation of your rights, rather than Magna Charta [sic] ... and the Petition of Right ... Haply, you will think it fitter to pass [over] it [the Petition and Advice] in silence than to arrange [i.e. arraign] it here’.171Burton’s Diary, iii. 170-1. In the confused debate on 10 February on whether to pass the bill, commit it, or allow consideration of a vote prior to commitment, recognising the protector as lawful chief magistrate, he favoured the third option as an ‘expedient’, but acknowledged that it ran counter to proper procedure, declaring that he had ‘read [the] Journals before I was a Parliament-man’.172CJ vii. 601b-602a; Burton’s Diary, iii. 194, 196, 200. The next day (11 Feb.), he questioned the legitimacy of the Petition and Advice: ‘It is said this House is a grand jury. If the Petition and Advice were arraigned, I should say billa vera [a true bill] and find guilty ... One hundred and fifty Members were kept out [of the second protectoral Parliament in 1656]’. This present debate, he argued represented an opportunity to strengthen the protector’s title by confirming that ‘he ought to govern by laws, and such laws as the people [in Parliament] shall think fit to advise him’.173Burton’s Diary, iii. 215; Schilling, ‘Gell diary, 1659’, 57-8. Nevertheless, he was opposed to adding a second and separate prior vote, confirming ‘the people’s rights the fundamental rights’, as Hesilrige and other commonwealthsmen were urging.174Burton’s Diary, iii. 141. Speaking on 14 February, he claimed to see nothing in a prior vote for recognising the protector as lawful chief magistrate that would undermine the people’s liberties, and that he (Knightley) was as ready to consider limitations upon the protector’s negative voice and control over the militia as any man: ‘but to say “we will not have this man reign over us”’, which he thought was implied by the proposed second prior vote, ‘I cannot agree to it’.175Burton’s Diary, iii. 262-3, 282.

After voting on 19 February 1659 not to proceed in debating the protector’s negative voice, the House turned its attention to the vexed question of the nature and title of the Cromwellian Other House. On this issue, Knightley reiterated his conviction that the right way was the safe way, which to his mind meant restoring a House of Lords. ‘We must consider what constitution we are upon’, he insisted on 19 February, ‘what we have, not what we shall have. We have a constitution by a single person and a House of Lords, or peers, which you will. I can consent to no other. I move, therefore, that you declare the House of Peers to be the Other House’.176Burton’s Diary, iii. 351-2. The Petition and Advice, he claimed on 28 February, did not create a House of Lords but a potential monster of arbitrary power, of which the Commons could not touch ‘a horn or a hoof’. He therefore proposed that a bill be brought in ‘to take down their number, and for the future, let none be called thither but such as shall be allowed by this House. If, in future, we should see anything in that constitution defective, we may mend it’.177Burton’s Diary, iii. 511, 545. In the meantime, he favoured a proposal made by Swynfen for transacting with the Other House not upon the basis of the Petition and Advice, ‘but as they are called by the protector’s writ; so to apply de facto to them, but not to approve them’.178Burton’s Diary, iii. 564-5. Having tired by 5 March of the seemingly interminable debate on the Other House, he proposed a simple solution to the problem

I would not have us wander up and down. My humble petition and advice to you is that you would go with a petition of grace to his Highness to have the old Lords brought in. It is told you very well what fault there is in the Petition and Advice as to that point. Entreat his Highness to send some noble persons in there [the Other House] to advise with you. Tell him your straits.179Burton’s Diary, iv. 22.

On 8 March, he supported calls from Robert Reynolds, Arthur Annesley and ‘many of the country gentlemen’ for restoring the old peers.180Burton’s Diary, iv. 77; Henry Cromwell Corresp. 472. Although Knightley was in contact by this point with the royalist spy-master Lord Mordaunt, there is no reason to believe that he supported restoring the House of Lords as part of a larger design to bring back the Stuart monarchy.181Clarendon SP, iii. 433. Moreover, Mordaunt’s claim that Knightley was ‘naturally choleric’ is not at all borne out by his parliamentary career. Indeed, just a few weeks later, following calls that Sir Henry Vane II be called to the bar of the House for questioning the integrity of its proceedings, Knightley seconded Hesilrige in moving that ‘heats be forborne and that you bear with one another’.182Burton’s Diary, iv. 294-5.

When, in mid-March 1659, the commonwealthsmen raised objections to the presence of the Scottish Members in the House and questioned their right to sit, Knightley again took a practical and irenic line. He agreed with the republicans that ‘these Members come here without any semblance of a law’, but though he was ‘not satisfied fully of their legal right, yet in their equitable right I am not against their admission .... We must do like prudent men...put the question for their continuance, I shall give my yea to it’. However, he repeatedly moved, contrary to the court-party line, that the Scottish Members withdraw from the House immediately prior to any vote as to their constitutional status.183Burton’s Diary, iv. 96, 108, 118-19, 134, 147, 205; Schilling, ‘Gell diary’, 190, 201, 215.

Mindful of his own advice to act prudently, Knightley joined Hesilrige and Vane on 21 April 1659 in urging the House not to provoke the army by proceeding immediately with a proposal to settle the armed forces as a militia under the joint control of the protector and Parliament.184Burton’s Diary, iv. 472-4. The next day (22 Apr.), the army forced the protector to dissolve Parliament, but the majority of commons-men refused to acknowledge this order, and, with Hesilrige and Knightley in the vanguard, they exclaimed against the army’s proceedings and declared it ‘treason for any persons whatsoever to put force upon any Members of the House’.185[A. Annesley*], England’s Confusion, or a True and Impartial Relation of the Late Traverses of State in England (1659), 8-9 (E.985.1). After which they adjourned until 25 April, when Hesilrige and about 40 or 50 other Members (Knightley probably among them) attempted to resume their seats, only to find the door of the House shut and guarded by soldiers.186Henry Cromwell Corresp. 507. Following the army’s restoration of the Rump early in May, Knightley was among a dozen or so secluded Members of the Long Parliament who also tried to gain access to the House, but were again barred by the soldiers. These Members then addressed a letter to Speaker Lenthall, recounting how they had been ‘forcibly hindered...from going into the House’ and warning him and the other restored Rumpers ‘that though to yourselves you may seem to sit free, there is the same force...continued at your doors which excluded, interrupted and forced the major part of the House in 1648’.187[Annesley], England’s Confusion, 11, 13-15. At some point that spring or summer, the Quakers included Knightley on a list of Northamptonshire magistrates and gentlemen who were ‘free from persecution and loving towards Friends’, describing him as having ‘stood firm to the commonwealth’ in the last Parliament.188SP18/102/50, f. 107.

The second restoration of the Rump, late in December 1659, prompted yet another attempt by Knightley – this time with Crewe, Gerard and 20 or so other secluded Members – to enter the House, only to be turned away once again.189W. Prynne, A Brief Narrative of the Manner how Divers [Secluded] Members of the House of Commons...were again Forcibly Shut Out (1659), 3 (E.1011.4). He was among those secluded Members who consulted with General George Monck* and leading Rumpers in mid-February 1660 concerning their proposed re-admission to the Commons.190Baker, Chronicle, 687; Clarke Pprs. v. 363. And he took his seat immediately the secluded Members were re-admitted, on 21 February. Between then and final dissolution of the Long Parliament in mid-March 1660, he served as teller in one, minor, division and was named to 11 committees, including those on bills for appointing a new council of state, for calling a new Parliament – the 1660 Convention – for appointing General George Monck* commander-in-chief and for settling Hampton Court and other lands upon him.191CJ vii. 847b, 848a, 848b, 850b, 855a, 857a, 859b, 860b, 863b, 868b, 877a. On 23 February, Knightley received the fourth highest number of votes in the elections to a new council of state, of which he was an active member.192CJ vii. 849, 868a; CSP Dom. 1659-60, pp. xxvi, xxvii. Fittingly, his last appointment in the Long Parliament was to a committee set up on 15 March for confirming ministers in their livings.193CJ vii. 877a.

In the elections to the 1660 Convention, Knightley and Crewe were selected by the Northamptonshire gentry as their favoured candidates, but Knightley – whom Mordaunt identified as one of the councillors least favourably disposed towards restoring the king – was abandoned by his supporters after questioning the wisdom of an unconditional restoration of monarchy.194CCSP iv. 674; HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Northamptonshire’. Rejected in Northamptonshire, he was returned for St Germans, Cornwall, on the interest of John Eliot*.195HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘St Germans’. Knightley – who was listed by Philip Lord Wharton as a likely supporter of a Presbyterian church settlement – was an active member of the Convention, making 28 recorded speeches and receiving 48 committee appointments.196HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Richard Knightley’; G.F.T. Jones, ‘The composition and leadership of the Presbyterian party in the Convention’, EHR lxxix. 334. In the debates on the bill of indemnity, he spoke in favour of Richard Salwey and against excluding those who had abjured the monarchy or signed the Instrument of Government; and on religious questions he generally sided with the Presbyterian interest.197HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Richard Knightley’.

Knightley stood for Northamptonshire again in the elections to the Cavalier Parliament in 1661. But though he reportedly succeeded in winning over the county’s Catholic interest, as well as the sectaries by promising to support toleration, he could not prevail against the machinations of the sheriff on election day.198HP Commons 1660-1690, ‘Northamptosnhire’. As part of the crown’s efforts to court leading Presbyterians, he was created a knight of the Bath at Charles II’s coronation in April 1661. According to Edmund Ludlowe II*, however, the ‘popish and superstitious’ content of the installation ceremony proved almost too much for his Puritan sensibilities, for ‘having some remainder of conscience, [he] scrupled for a while the bowing at the altar and, being prevailed with to do it, was so troubled for having done it that (as is supposed) it was a means to shorten his days’.199Ludlow, Voyce, 286.

Knightley died, intestate, on 29 June 1661 and was buried at Fawsley on 6 July.200Vis. Northants. 108. Neither of his sons would produce a male heir, and therefore he was the last of his line to enter Parliament.