Samuel Knight (1675–1746) was an English clergyman and antiquary.
Life
editHe was born in London the son of John Knight,[1] a mercer,[2] and attended St Paul's School, London and Trinity College, Cambridge (BA 1702, MA 1706), and received a Cambridge DD in 1706.[2] He was ordained in 1704 and served as curate of Northwold, Norfolk.[3] He then became chaplain to the Earl of Orford, who presented him to the rectory of Burrough Green and vicarage of Chippenham in Cambridgeshire in 1707.[2] In 1714 he was appointed to a Prebendary of Ely cathedral by Bishop John Moore and shortly thereafter to the rectory of Bluntisham, Huntingdonshire,[4] He held Burrough Green and Bluntisham until his death.[3]
In 1717 he married Hannah (d. 1719), the daughter of Talbot Pepys of Impington, Cambridgeshire.[2]
He was appointed chaplain to King George II in February 1731[2] and was promoted to be Archdeacon of Berkshire in 1746 by Thomas Sherlock, bishop of Salisbury.[4] He was installed as a prebendary of Lincoln in 1742.[2]
At Bluntisham Knight built himself an 'excellent house, and laid out a great deal of money in gardens about it'.[5] He died on 10 December 1746 and was buried in Bluntisham Church, where a white marble monument was erected with an inscription by his friend Edmund Castle.[2][4] His son Samuel(d. 1790) followed his father to Cambridge and into the church.[6] In 1766 he purchased an estate in Milton, Cambridgeshire, becoming rector there a decade later.[7]
According to William Cole, who lived in Milton in retirement and knew Knight's son,[8] Knight was 'a very black and thin man, and had much the look of a Frenchman'.[2]
Works
edit
According to Cole, Knight was raised as a dissenter and a strong Protestant bias is certainly shown in his works:[2]
- The Life of Dr. John Colet, Dean of St. Paul's, London, 1724
- The Life of Erasmus, Cambridge, 1726
In his biography of Erasmus, Knight argues, like many contemporary Protestants, that Erasmus was truly a Protestant at heart but did not fully express this during his lifetime, claiming that he was 'self-evidently a latitudinarian, and that he gave birth to that sect of men'.[9] The full title of the work - 'More Particularly that Part of it which He Spent in England, Wherein an Account is Given of His Learned Friends, and the State of Religion and Learning at that Time in Both Our Universities' - underlines the focus of the biography on Erasmus' friends in England and English universities.[10] Both works were dedicated to Spencer Compton, speaker of the House of Commons[2] He corresponded with Browne Willis in order to provide him with information on Ely Cathedral for Willis' publication Survey of Lincoln, Ely, Oxford, and Peterborough Cathedrals (1730).[11]
References
edit- ^ "Knight, Samuel (KNT697S)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Lee, Sidney, ed. (1892). . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 31. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
- ^ a b "Church of England Clergy Database - Person: Knight, Samuel (1704 - 1747)". Retrieved 15 October 2024.
- ^ a b c Bentham, James (1812). The History and Antiquities of the Conventual & Cathedral Church of Ely. Vol. 2. pp. 263–4.
- ^ "VCH Huntingdon, volume 2: Bluntisham cum Earith". British History Online. Retrieved 6 October 2024.
- ^ "Knight, Samuel (KNT735S)". A Cambridge Alumni Database. University of Cambridge.
- ^ "VCH Cambridgeshire, Volume 9:Milton: Manor and other estates". British History Online. Retrieved 16 October 2024.
- ^ The New Cambridge Guide. 1812. p. 110.
- ^ Knight, Samuel (1746). The Life of Erasmus. p. xiii.
- ^ Knight 1726, pp. iii–iv.
- ^ Bodleian MS Willis 45