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Samuel Knight

1678-1746

Samuel Knight was born in London, the son of John Knight, a freeman of the Mercers' Company. He was educated at St Paul's School and entered Trinity as a sizar in 1697, aged nineteen. He graduated BA during the year 1702-3, MA in 1706, and DD in 1717, and was later incorporated at Oxford in 1740. He was ordained priest by John Moore, Bishop of Norwich, on 24 September 1704 and became chaplain to Edward Russell, Earl of Orford, who in 1707 presented him to the rectory of Burrough Green, in Cambridgeshire, and the vicarage of Chippenham, in Suffolk. In 1714 John Moore, by then bishop of Ely, collated him to the seventh prebendal stall in Ely Cathedral, and in 1717 to the rectory of Bluntisham, in Huntingdonshire.

Knight was one of the ‘revivers’ of the Society of Antiquaries in 1717 and a member of the Spalding Gentlemen's Society, whose members included most distinguished antiquarian scholars of the day. He was a friend and correspondent of the majority of these, who included Edmund Gibson, Thomas Tanner, White Kennett, and William Cole. No doubt he had been influenced in this direction by Thomas Gale, master of St Paul's School, whose son Roger was one of Knight's correspondents, and by his patron Bishop Moore. He was encouraged in his antiquarian studies by Thomas Baker, Fellow of St John's College, Cambridge. Knight was a collector of manuscripts and used his periods of residence at Ely to investigate the manuscripts there. He also worked on a historical account of the Ely Cathedral manuscripts, which, though apparently not completed, was used by James Bentham in his history of the cathedral. In 1724 Knight published a life of John Colet, Dean of St Paul's and founder of St Paul's School. This had been begun by White Kennett, who gave it up when he began to plan the publication of all the important historical documents of Charles II's reign and handed over the materials to Knight for completion; Knight made little public acknowledgement of Kennett's major contribution to the work. He published a life of Erasmus in 1726, of which John Jortin, a subsequent biographer of Erasmus, commented: ‘Dr Knight's work is indeed confused and not over elegant, but it contains many good materials’. Knight made collections of material for biographies of Archbishop John Peckham, bishops Robert Grosseteste, John Overall, Lancelot Andrewes, George Mountain, and Robert Sanderson, and of John Strype. He also annotated and completed Bishop Simon Patrick's autobiography, the manuscript of which he owned.

Knight appears to have been an ‘active and useful’ residentiary canon at Ely. He was involved in a concerted attempt by the dean and chapter to make benefactions to the governors of Queen Anne's bounty, to attract further benefactions of £200 for livings in their gift, so that their endowments were increased by a total of £400 each.

Knight continued to receive ecclesiastical preferment in the later part of his career. On 29 December 1730 he was appointed a chaplain to George II. In 1735 Thomas Sherlock, Bishop of Salisbury, collated him to the archdeaconry of Berkshire. Knight was an active archdeacon and made regular diurnal visitations, unusual for a pluralist. When his turn came to preach at Salisbury Cathedral as archdeacon he used his visits to study the manuscripts in the chapter house. In 1742 Richard Reynolds, bishop of Lincoln, collated him to the prebendal stall of Leighton Ecclesia in Lincoln Cathedral.

Knight died on 10 December 1746 and was buried beside his wife in the chancel of Bluntisham church, where the inscription on his monument was composed by his friend Dr Castle, Dean of Hereford and master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge. He left an ‘ample fortune’ to his son, Samuel, Fellow of Trinity, who was ordained priest in 1743 and whose father's interest was remembered when Bishop Sherlock awarded him the valuable sinecure rectory of Fulham in Middlesex.

DNB/Venn