KNIGHTLEY, Rainald (1819-1895), of Fawsley, Northants.

Best known for his role in the cross-party alliance that helped to defeat the 1866 Liberal reform bill, Knightley clocked up forty years on the Tory backbenches as an independent country gentleman. Part of the aristocratic faction of ‘Old Believers’ who maintained a deep distrust of Disraelian Conservatism prior to 1868, he was also a noted whist player, who codified the laws of the game with fellow Old Believer and founding member of the Turf Club, ‘Big Ben’ Bentinck.1F. B. Smith, The Making of the Second Reform Bill (1966), 124; W. P. Courtney, English whist and English whist players (1894), 29-30, 228; J. Ridley, ‘Knightley, Rainald (1819-1895), Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com.

Knightley’s ancestors had represented Northamptonshire intermittently since 1420. His father, Charles, sat for the southern division of the county between 1835 and 1852.2HP Commons, 1832-68, ‘Knightley, Charles’. Like him, Knightley was educated at Eton, but he did not continue on to Oxford. After Eton, he was privately tutored for two years before embarking on a grand tour that took in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France.3Northants. RO, ‘Rainald Knightley’s journal of his tour in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and France 1837-1838’, < http://www.northamptonshire.gov.uk/en/councilservices/Community/archives/Documents/PDF%20Documents/FAMILY%20Records%20Jackson%20to%20Knightley.pdf> [accessed 2 Mar. 2016]. He returned to his father’s Fawsley estate in 1838, where he would remain for the rest of his life, and over the following decade or so he threw himself into county life – at balls, on the bench, in the yeomanry and as an enthusiastic member of the Pytchley hunt – whilst maintaining an inconspicuous association with local Conservative politics.4Northampton Mercury, 20 Mar. 1841, 16 Dec. 1843, 13 Jan. 1844, 27 Jan. 1844, 3 Jan. 1846, 7 Feb. 1846, 28 Feb. 1846, 26 Jan. 1850; J. Cartwright, The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley, 1856-1884 (1915), 181.

Following his father’s decision to retire from Northamptonshire South in 1852, Knightley announced his intention to stand as his replacement, initiating a career-long rift with the local Conservative association, who he had not consulted. Their nominee, William Cartwright, was eventually persuaded to stand down, following a public apology from both Knightley and his father, and Knightley’s own offer to give way.5Northampton Mercury, 26 June 1852, 3 July 1852, 10 July 1852. As well as embarrassing local Conservatives, the dispute added fuel to Liberal charges that the county had become the Knightleys’ nomination borough – accusations reinforced by Knightley’s father’s close connection with the Northamptonshire Chronicle and role in choosing previous candidates.6HP Commons, 1832-68, ‘Cartwright, William Ralph’. On the hustings Knightley appeared to distance himself from his father’s protectionist reputation by announcing that ‘his principles were those of a Liberal Conservative’ and that the agricultural interest should seek alternate means of relief than simply reinstating protection. He also signalled his support for the ‘pure Protestant Church’ and his willingness to provide independent support to the Derby administration.7Northamptonshire Mercury, 17 July 1852.

Despite Knightley’s professions of liberality on the hustings, his first act of note at Westminster was to side with a small minority of hard-line Protectionists against an amended version of Villiers’ motion praising free trade, 27 Nov. 1852. For a brief period he sided with the Conservative whip on major issues (his attendance of the division lobbies was slightly below average for the parliament), and in January 1855 he acted as one of Disraeli’s ‘small deers’, who prolonged debate over Roebuck’s motion for a select committee on the condition of the army in the Crimean War in order that Conservative members could get to London to support it, 26 and 29 Jan. 1855.8Disraeli to William Jolliffe, 25 Jan. 1855: Benjamin Disraeli letters, 1852-56, ed. J. Gunn et al. (1997), vi. 401. It was not long, however, before Knightley started to signal his burgeoning ‘distrust’ of Disraeli and his style of party management.9Cartwright, Journals, 240. In 1855 Knightley voted in the majority against Disraeli’s motion criticising the prosecution of the Crimean War, 25 May 1855, and in January 1857, whilst out shooting with the chief whip, he poured cold water over Derby and Disraeli’s attempts to unite the Peelite and old protectionist wing of the party, telling Jolliffe that he ‘was not speaking only for himself when he said he would give a bitter opposition to any [Conservative] Government which included Gladstone’.10W. F. Moneypenny & G. Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield (1920), iv. 60.

Following this, Knightley was in the majority against Disraeli’s motion to rearrange finances to allow income tax to be abolished, 23 Feb. 1857, abstained from voting with Disraeli in support of Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar 1857, and at the subsequent election expressed his public support for Palmerston’s ‘prosecution of the [Chinese] war’.11Northampton Mercury, 4 Apr. 1857. Knightley only made a handful of unremarkable contributions to debate in his first parliament, owing to a lack of confidence, as well as his personal distaste for the practice of extensive, grandstanding speeches in the House.12Hansard, 3 May 1861, vol. 162, cc. 1499-1500; Northampton Mercury, 20 Dec. 1895.

At the 1857 election Knightley declined to issue a joint election address with Vyse, and distanced himself from him on the hustings, where he reminded electors of his refusal to follow Disraeli over the Chinese war. Accordingly, he labelled himself a ‘thoroughly independent’ but ‘consistent Conservative’ and spoke in favour of the established Church, expressed a willingness to widen the franchise in the counties and opposed the ballot and triennial parliaments.13Northampton Mercury, 4 Apr. 1857. He came second in the poll, which saw Vyse ousted by the Liberal candidate, Viscount Althorp. His attendance at Westminster was poor prior to the fall of the Palmerston ministry, but following the news of Orsini’s attempted assassination of Napoleon III he provided support to Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder motion, 9 Feb. 1858. Fortunately for Knightley, who sought to avoid Milner Gibson’s subsequent censure motion, 19 Feb., a by-election (prompted by Althorp’s succession to the peerage) had been scheduled in Northamptonshire South for the same time as the bill’s second reading. Knightley informed his constituents on 20 February that he had deliberately abstained due to the ‘unusual and inconvenient’ manner of Milner Gibson’s motion. Having discovered that he could not vote for Milner Gibson’s amendment (which he supported in principle) without also voting against the second reading of the bill (which he also supported in principle) he had opted to return to his constituency to attend the by-election.14Northampton Mercury, 27 Apr. 1857.

Knightley’s presence at Westminster increased thereafter, and whilst he voted with the minority Derby administration on most issues, he took an independent line in support of the established Church and was one of the hard-line opponents of the church rates abolition bill, 21 Apr. 1858. He supported Spooner’s anti-Maynooth motion, 29 Apr. 1858, and stated that he was ‘opposed to all measures for admitting Jews to Parliament’, prior to terming Derby’s Jewish Disabilities Removal Act ‘the very worst [bill] that was every submitted to the House’, 19 July 1858. Knightley also found his parliamentary voice during 1858 over the question of parliamentary reform – he supported the maintenance of the property qualification for MPs, 13 May, 2 June 1858; expressed his willingness to support the expansion of county franchise to £10 householders so long as borough freeholders were removed from the counties (and preferably if 130 borough seats were redistributed to the counties), 27 Apr. 1858, 22 Mar. 1859; supported the reimbursement of registration officers, 26 July 1858; and opposed restrictions on the conveyance of county voters unless some alternative mechanism was identified to prevent the effective disfranchisement of poor voters who could not afford to attend the poll without reimbursement, 2 Mar. 1859. Knightley later settled on voting papers as a solution to this issue.15Hansard, 4 June 1860, vol. 158, c. 1973.

Knightley divided in the minority in favour of the second reading of the Derby government’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859 and was re-elected unopposed at the subsequent election where he stood as a ‘moderate and liberal, but consistent, Conservative’.16Northampton Mercury, 30 Apr. 1859. On the hustings he took time to denigrate Lord John Russell, who he had termed a ‘very noisy, troublesome little pig’, for the naked personal ambition that he had demonstrated in voting against Palmerston over the Chinese war and the Orsini affair, which, Knightley lamented, had neutered Britain’s ability to preserve European peace.17Northampton Mercury, 27 Apr. 1857, 7 May 1859. During the subsequent parliament, he tended to vote with the Conservative whip, and spoke on a number of occasions, particularly on parliamentary reform, maintaining his previous positions on the issue. After sitting on the Ashburton election committee in 1859, he was vociferous in his support for the disfranchisement of corrupt boroughs, whose seats he hoped to transfer to the counties.18PP 1859 sess. 2 (220), xxvi. 107. On this basis he opposed the redistribution of seats to Chelsea and Kensington. His motion for an additional seat for Middlesex (which the Conservative whip opposed) was carried, 17 June 1861, although it did not form part of the final measure passed that session. He also took aim at the administration of the Commons, which he complained unfairly privileged ministerial business at the expense of independent members, 3 May 1861, 25 Feb. 1862, and spoke against the poor law union chargeability bill, as it would allow parishes to shirk their responsibilities for their own poor, 27 Mar., 11 May, 18 May 1865.

Knightley was returned top of the poll in 1865 ahead of Cartwright and their liberal opponent Lord Fitzroy, who Knightley condemned for his unwillingness to denounce the ‘democratic doctrines’ of John Bright.19Northampton Mercury, 22 July 1865. He played a prominent role in the debates over parliamentary reform that occupied the subsequent parliament, joining forces with the chief Adullamite Robert Lowe to oppose the Liberal reform bill, which he divided consistently against.20Cartwright, Journals, 196. He allegedly left Gladstone ‘scowling with rage’ and both sides of the House ‘in a roar,’21Cartwright, Journals, 230; He also sat on the Great Yarmouth election committee in March 1866: PP 1866 (140) (140-I), xi. 455, 513. when he likened the chancellor of the exchequer’s stewardship of the 1866 reform bill (to which the government had just hastily added its confused redistribution clauses) to that of a drunkard ‘clinging convulsively to a lamp post, afraid to advance and unable to stand upright’, 7 May 1866. Most significant was his successful instruction that the Liberal reform bill should include provision for ‘the better prevention of bribery and corruption at elections’, which was carried by a majority of ten and gained the support of several Adullamites including Lowe, 28 May 1866. Knightley’s instruction was considered by the Spectator, and by later historians, to have been primarily a Conservative blocking tactic.22Spectator, 30 June 1866; Smith, Reform, 102-3. However, Knightley had exhibited an active interest in the issue, particularly in relation to the small boroughs, since at least 1858. Knightley and Lowe later recollected in 1872 that during 1866 their co-operation had created a ‘strong Constitutional party’, whose efforts were ‘destroyed the following year’ by the Second Reform Act.23Cartwright, Journals, 230. Knightley’s willingness during 1866 to actively associate with Lowe to bring down the Liberal reform bill, rather than sit back and watch backbench Liberals destroy the Russell government’s bill (like Disraeli had chosen to do in order to avoid provoking the wrath of the urban householder that he would enfranchise a year later), revealed how close Knightley’s ‘Old Believer’ Conservativism was to Lowe’s moderate Liberalism. For, as Smith and Saunders have suggested, both of these factions believed intuitively that the best means of achieving future constitutional stability was through ‘a coalition of the gentry that would slough off the unsteady men’ – the Russells, Gladstones and Disraelis of their respective parties.24Smith, Reform, 124; R. Saunders, ‘The politics of reform and the making of the second reform bill’, HJ, 50 (2003), 583.

After the fall of Russell’s government, Knightley’s continued unwillingness to toe the Conservative line was confirmed, when in July 1866, following another attempt by Derby at coalition building within the party, he refused the posts of under-secretary for foreign affairs and secretary of the admiralty on the basis that he could not work under Disraeli.25Cartwright, Journals, 174-175; Disraeli to Derby, 2 July 1866: Benjamin Disraeli letters, 1865-68, ed. J. A. W. Gunn et al. (2013), ix. 80-1; M. Cowling, ‘Disraeli, Derby and Fusion, October 1865 to July 1866’, HJ, 8 (1965), 31-71. Although Knightley opposed a household franchise in the boroughs, his grudging acceptance of Disraeli’s reform bill proposals was probably secured by the chancellor’s insistence that a bill to prevent bribery was in preparation, 8 Apr. 1867. Knightley remained independent throughout the debates on the reform bill and divided against the government in opposition to boroughs with a population of under 10,000 returning more than one member, 31 May; in trying to disfranchise all boroughs with a population of under 5,000, 3 June; supporting the provision of an extra seat to six boroughs with a population of over 150,000, 17 June; and in the minority in favour of Lowe’s motion on cumulative voting, 5 June 1867. Echoing his actions a year earlier with Gladstone, Knightley was responsible for haranguing Disraeli into announcing his intention to introduce a separate bill to prevent bribery and corruption, 19 Mar., 8 Apr., 6 May 1867. Following this he served on the select committee that produced what eventually became the 1868 Election Petitions and Corrupt Practices at Elections Act.26K. Rix, ‘The Second Reform Act and the problem of electoral corruption’, Parliamentary History (forthcoming 2017); PP 1867 (436), viii. 1. In May 1868, Knightley reversed his vote of a year earlier, and objected to the disfranchisement of boroughs with a population of less than 5,000 as a solution to the addition of Scottish seats to the Commons. He stated that his previous support for such a move had been on the basis that those seats would be redistributed to the counties, and instead proposed an unsuccessful amendment to remove a seat from every double-member borough with a population of under 12,000. He had hoped this would prevent the disfranchisement of small boroughs ‘for no fault of their own’, and target a group of ‘nasty corrupt little boroughs’ such as Barnstaple, Tiverton and Bridgwater, 18 May 1868.

Knightley initially resigned at the subsequent election, after charging the local Conservative association with expecting him to shoulder the election costs of his fellow sitting MP, Henry Cartwright. His move prompted a grovelling apology from the Conservative association, who realised that without Knightley they were unlikely to retain their control of the county’s two seats, and led to the resignation of Cartwright.27Northampton Mercury, 20 Dec. 1895; HP Commons, 1832-68, ‘Cartwright, Henry’. Knightley continued to represent Northamptonshire South until 1885, when he was re-elected to the new single-member constituency of the same name, thanks largely to his wife’s involvement with the activities of the local Conservative party. Knightley had married the 27-year old Louisa Bowater two days before his fiftieth birthday in 1869, and as well as playing an active role in Northamptonshire politics, they ‘conquered London society’.28Ridley, ‘Knightley’, Oxf. DNB. Towards the end of his career Salisbury proved more amenable to Knightley than Disraeli, but he continued to retain his independent streak. However, his attendance in the division lobbies was well below average after 1868, and on his death in 1894 it was said by one contemporary that he had ‘sat in the House of Commons for nearly forty years almost in silence’.29Courtney, English whist, 228. Gladstone offered a more generous contemporary recollection of him, reportedly stating that he was ‘one of the cleverest members of the old Tory party and beyond doubt the most dextrous debater in the House’.30Cartwright, Journals, 182. The reality lies somewhere in between, particularly prior to 1868, when he is best considered as a relatively active member of a group of Tory squires who had little respect for Disraeli’s emerging brand of popular Conservatism.

Knightley retired in 1892 and was subsequently given a peerage, being created Baron Knightley of Fawsley on 23 Aug. 1892. He suffered the first of several strokes in November 1894, and died just over a year later on 19 Dec. 1895, following which his titles became extinct. He was buried at his Fawsley estate and his will was proved under £23,023.31England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1896, 43 (28 Apr. 1896). Knightley’s travel diaries (1837-41), and the diaries of Lady Knightley (1856-1913), of which two volumes of selected material have been published, are held by the Northamptonshire Record Office.32Cartwright, Journals; P. Gordon, Politics and Society: The Journals of Lady Knightley of Fawsley, 1885-1913 (1999).