KNIGHTLEY, Sir Charles, 2nd bt. (1781-1864), of Fawsley, Northants. and 10 Upper Brook Street, London.

‘One of the finest horseman that ever got into a saddle’, Knightley represented Northamptonshire South between 1835 and 1852.1Sporting Magazine, July 1856, 4. He was a dyed-in-the-wool backbench protectionist, who would have ‘melted his last tankard for Church and King’, as well as a skilled cattle breeder and celebrated huntsman.2Northampton Mercury, 3 Sept. 1864.

Knightley’s ancestors had represented Northamptonshire from their Fawsley seat near Daventry since 1420.3HP Commons, 1386-1421, iii. 528-30. He was educated at Rugby and Christ Church and at 22 joined the Northamptonshire yeomanry ahead of the resumption of war in May 1803.4London Gazette, 14 Jan. 1804. During the subsequent decade he became a skilled rider on the Pytchley Hunt – which doubled as a training ground for cavalry horses – and it was probably during this period that Knightley’s reported leap of thirty-one feet on Benvolio took place.5H. Nethercote, The Pytchley Hunt (1888); K. Tout, Yeoman of England: Tales of the Northamptonshire Yeomanry 1794-1966 (2012); Sporting Magazine, July 1856, 2-7. Following his accession to a baronetage in 1812 and his marriage in 1813, he became active in London society from his Mayfair residence, 10 Upper Brook Street. When at his Fawsley estate he devoted his attention to cattle breeding and agricultural improvement, an issue he began to take an active interest in as a member of the Royal Smithfield Club from December 1823.6Morning Post, 16 Dec. 1823. His first known public involvement in Northamptonshire politics was in 1826, when he proposed the sitting Tory MP William Ralph Cartwright. After proposing Cartwright again in 1831, he became a last minute anti-reform candidate for the county at the same election, and although he finished bottom of the poll he performed strongly in the south-western hundreds of the county near his Fawsley estate.7Northants. Pollbook (1831), 127; HP Commons 1820-32, iv. 746-750; D. C. Moore, The Politics of Deference (1976).

Viscount Althorp’s succession to the peerage in November 1834 opened a vacancy in the reformed southern division of the county, and Knightley, who had remained politically active since 1832 – most notably becoming a founding vice-president of the Banbury Agricultural Association in October 1834 – commenced an immediate canvass.8Northampton Mercury, 15 Nov. 1834. He promised to ‘preserve the existing institutions of the country in church and state, and to oppose every measure which may have a tendency to weaken the agricultural interest’, a position that he maintained throughout his parliamentary career.9Northampton Mercury, 22 Nov. 1834. Had it not been for Peel’s decision to dissolve parliament in December 1834, it is likely Knightley would have been returned unopposed at a by-election. His canvass reputedly secured the assurances of 3,000 of the county’s 4,200 electors, and the vigour with which Tory barristers had pursued the disfranchisement of opponents in the registration courts that October had stunned Liberal agents.10Northampton Mercury, 22 Nov. 1834, 3 Jan. 1835, 17 Jan. 1835; Buckinghamshire Herald, 6 Dec. 1834. In the event, no Liberal candidate came forward at the ensuring 1835 general election, and Knightley was returned unopposed with Cartwright. On the hustings he maintained his pro-Church, pro-agricultural stance, but attempted to moderate his reputation amongst liberal opinion in the borough by claiming to not know what the term ultra-Tory meant and declaring that ‘he was no enemy to the honest and conscientious dissenter’.11Northampton Mercury, 17 Jan. 1835.

Knightley broke his leg falling from his horse shortly after his election and missed every major division of Peel’s brief administration.12The Times, 23 Feb. 1835. Fears that he might not recover were allayed in April 1835, and he was well enough to attend parliament that June, when he presented a petition for the repeal of duty on spirit licences, 17 June, and divided in the minority against the disfranchisement of all future freeman, 23 June 1835.13The Times, 21 Apr. 1835. Knightley’s parliamentary activity reached a high-water mark during 1836 when he spoke on a handful of occasions and attended 62 divisions, well above the average of 44. In a rare demonstration of his verbal flair during a debate on the newspaper stamp duties he called on parliament ‘to improve the minds of the people by purifying their bodies’, instead moving for a reduction in the duties on soap, which he also reasoned would be a ‘small boon’ to the agricultural interest, 20 June 1836. He occasionally demonstrated a propensity for independence in the division lobby, voting against most Tories in favour of the admission of ladies into the strangers’ gallery, 3 May 1836, and in the minority against allowing MPs to be the paid advocate of particular interests in parliament, 30 June 1836. On the whole, though, he voted consistently with the Conservative whip, a habit he maintained until 1842. He did not speak again prior to the dissolution of parliament in July 1837.

Knightley was returned unopposed with Cartwright at that year’s election, when he employed strong anti-Catholic rhetoric on the hustings in protest at the recent support provided by Irish MPs to the Whig government. ‘The question’, he informed electors, was whether ‘the future be cheered by the light of Protestantism, or be surrounded by the dark shadow of Popery’.14Northampton Mercury, 29 July 1837. Knightley maintained an average attendance in the division lobbies until 1839, when his parliamentary activity began to steadily decline, but maintained his loyalty to the Conservative whip. He consistently divided against any alteration to the corn laws or the parliamentary franchise, was in the minority against the appropriation of Irish Church revenues, 15 May 1838, and in the majority against ministers in the confidence vote of 4 June 1841. He presented several petitions between 1839 and 1841 in support of the corn laws, objecting to any plan of national education not founded on the principles of the Church, 30 May 1839, and opposing the extension of the grant to Maynooth, 23 July 1839. In several speeches in this parliament, he linked the corn laws to the high wages of the English worker during a debate on Lord Ashley’s motion against child factory labour, which he also divided for, 20 July 1838. He questioned the financial benefits to the poor that the government’s proposal to reduce the cost of postage stamps would bring, arguing instead that a reduction in the duty on post horses would be more useful to those ‘engaged in the posting business’, 22 July 1839. On 6 Feb. 1840 he was jeered and reprimanded when he interrupted the schedule of the House to request several reforms to the postal system, and he spoke in favour of the continuation of treating at elections as a means of ensuring ‘poor electors’ were reimbursed for attending a poll, 28 May 1840.

Knightley and Cartwright successfully contested their seats in 1841, beating a last minute Liberal candidate by over 1,000 votes. Ironically, given subsequent events, Knightley dismissed a recent report that Peel would support an alteration to the corn laws as ‘malignant’ and assured electors that a Conservative government ‘would not give way to popular clamour’ for repeal.15Northampton Mercury, 3 July 1841, 10 July 1841. Despite informing the electors that he would work to preserve the corn laws ‘in their full efficiency’, Knightley was willing to vote with the new government for their proposed sliding scale, 9 Mar. 1842, a move he later justified on the basis that, at the time, it had ensured the farmer ‘that little protection’ available to them.16Northampton Mercury, 28 Feb. 1846. Knightley’s willingness to support the ministry was short-lived however, and his vote in favour of levying rates on the importation of foreign livestock, for which he had lobbied the home secretary, Sir James Graham, signalled his growing disillusionment with the Peel administration, 23 May 1842.17BL Add. 79727, ff. 56-8, J. R. G. Graham to C. Knightley, 4 Apr. 1842. He made his only recorded speech to the 1841 Parliament on the issue, to warn in a patriotic tone that one effect of the government’s proposals to reduce rates would be the saturation of his beloved Smithfield market with the cattle of Russian farmers, much to the detriment of British breeders, 17 Mar. 1846. Following this, Knightley maintained a consistent opposition to annual motions to repeal the corn laws, and rebelled against the whip on reducing the duties on corn imports from Canada, 2 June 1843. As a mark of his growing inactivity, he voted in only nine divisions in 1844. That year he failed to attend the controversial divisions on the sugar duties bill, but he was present to vote against Russell’s proposal to consider the state of Ireland, 23 Feb. 1844. He again opposed the government over the Maynooth grant, 18 Apr., 21 May 1845.

A by-election in Northamptonshire South in February 1846, which returned the Protectionist Richard Vyse, allowed Knightley to air his frustration with Peel’s administration. Speaking in favour of Vyse on the hustings and signalling his deference for the views of ‘Mr D’Israeli’, he labelled Peel’s ‘tergiversation’ over the corn laws a ‘moral disgrace’ and ‘declared to God that … he would rather be carried to his grave to-morrow than vote with Sir Robert’.18Northampton Mercury, 28 Feb. 1846. He duly divided against the government against corn law repeal, 27 Mar., 15 May 1846. With his alienation from the administration complete, he joined his fellow protectionists in ejecting Peel from office by voting with the Whigs and Irish MPs against the second reading of the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846. Around this time he was also active on a number of private committees – he was chairman of the committee for the Kendal union gas and waterworks in May 1846, a member of the Westminster improvement committee in 1847, and took responsibility for a private bill proposing a Northampton to Banbury railway in February 1847.19PP 1846 (723-II), xxxiii. 123; PP 1847 (757-II), xlvi. 211.

Ahead of the 1847 election, Knightley was mocked by the editor of The Times as ‘a well dried specimen of the old English squire’ who should be ‘ticketed and put in a museum’20The Times, 7 Aug. 1847., following revelations that he had contrived to prevent the liberal-leaning son of his former Tory colleague, William Cartwright, from securing a nomination for the county during the 1846 by-election.21 The Times, 2 Aug. 1846; Northampton Mercury, 14 Aug. 1847. These accusations failed to prevent Knightley and Vyse from being returned on a protectionist ticket, and both secured a convincing majority over the Liberal candidate, Lord Henley. Knightley’s speeches during this bitter contest revealed his increasing paranoia over the consequences of free trade and the threat it posed to the established Church – his prophecy at his election dinner, when he stated ‘he must be blind indeed who didn’t see revolution stalking through the land’ being particularly characteristic.22Northampton Mercury, 7 Aug. 1847, 14 Aug. 1847; Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1847. Knightley remained loyal to the protectionist whip throughout his final parliament, but aside from a brief flurry of activity during 1851 his presence in the division lobby remained well below average. He made his only known speech of the parliament in April 1851, when he spoke in favour of enlarging Smithfield cattle market. In doing so, he ridiculed claims that the presence of ‘horned monsters’ in the streets around Smithfield posed any discomfort and risk to its inhabitants, and warned that the proposed transfer of the market to Islington would impede breeders as well as buyers, and result in an increase in the price of meat and a decrease in its freshness for consumers, 9 Apr. 1851. As a long-term advocate of the market, he had provided similar evidence to two select committees that had considered the market’s closure in 1847 and 1851, and he divided against the second reading of the government’s separate Smithfield market removal bill, 9 Apr. 1851.23PP 1847 (640), viii. 337-8; PP 1851 (376), x. 178-9; Lincolnshire Chronicle, 26 Feb. 1847. His lobbying failed to prevent the passage of the Smithfield Market Removal Act later that year, but it did coincide with an increased presence in the division lobbies, where he voted in the minority in favour of Disraeli’s motion on agricultural distress, 13 Feb. 1851, in the majority against the second reading of the county franchise bill, 2 Apr. 1851, and provided assiduous support to the ecclesiastical titles bill, supporting an increase in its anti-Catholic penalties, 6 June, 23 June 1851.

Knightley’s parliamentary activity dwindled in 1852, and ahead of the election that year he announced his retirement at the age of 71. In resignation he expressed his support for Lord Derby’s government, but confessed to his constituents that he felt out of step with the times, admitting ‘my notions on passing events are, I am aware, obsolete’.24Northampton Mercury, 3 July 1852. In resignation he offered his support to his son, Rainald, but not without controversy, as again it transpired that in doing so he had sidestepped the local Conservative committee who were also considering the more moderate candidacy of Colonel William Cartwright.25Northampton Mercury, 3 July 1852, 10 July 1852, 17 July 1852. After retirement he continued to breed cattle, and in April 1856 at an auction on his Fawsley estate (reportedly attended by 3,000 people) he secured the fourth largest sale of short-horn bulls ever recorded at the time.26Northampton Mercury, 5 Apr. 1856, 3 Sept. 1864. He died suddenly aged 83 at Fawsley on 30 August 1864, and his will was proved under £25,000.27England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, 21 Sept. 1864. His wife had died in 1856, but he was survived by his daughter, Sophia, and son Rainald (1819-1895), who sat as MP for South Northamptonshire between 1852 and 1892.