Family and Education

1st s. of Sir Thomas Knyvet of Ashwellthorpe (d.1617) by Muriel (d.1616), da. of Sir Thomas Parry. educ. Queens’, Camb. 1584; M. Temple 1591. m. Elizabeth, da. and coh. of Nathaniel Bacon of Stiffkey, Norf., 2s. 1da. Kntd. 1603.

Offices Held

Purveyor, Tower mint 1600; commr. sewers, Norf. by 1602.

Biography

As Knyvet died in his father’s lifetime, probably aged under 40, he never became prominent in the county. His parents, who seem to have had puritan sympathies, supported Nathaniel Bacon, later Thomas’s father-in-law, and Thomas Farmer in their quarrel against Sir William Heydon and Sir Edward Clere, one of the more notorious disputes in a faction-ridden county. Knyvet himself possibly owed his return at Aldeburgh to his relatives the Woodhouses of Kimberley, and at Thetford to (Sir) John Fortescue I, his mother’s half-brother, who had been acting chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster earlier in 1601, and who was appointed chancellor soon after Parliament met. He died in September 1605, and was buried at Feltwell, Norfolk. His elder son Thomas, who claimed the title Lord Berners, and married a daughter of Thomas Lord Burgh, succeeded to the family estates in 1617.

Le Neve’s Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 21-3; Vis. Norf. 1664 (Norf. Rec. Soc.), 116; Brit. Numismatic Jnl. xlv. 63; C181/21; A. H. Smith thesis, 207; Somerville, Duchy, i. 335; Knyvet Letters (Norf. Rec. Soc. xx), 27 et passim.

Ref Volumes: 1558-1603

Author: N. M. Fuidge

Notes