Family and Education

b. ?1689, 1st s. of Francis Knollys of Grove Place by Margaret, da. of Edward Fleming of North Stoneham, Hants. educ. Trinity, Oxf. 17 Oct. 1704, aged 15; M. Temple 1705. m., 1s. suc. fa. 1701.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Hants 1716-17.

Biography

Descended from Sir Henry Knollys, comptroller of the Household to Charles I, who granted him the manor of Nursling, Knollys came into a good estate while still a minor. Sent down from Oxford in 1707 for ‘being disobedient, and insulting, and very abusive to the society’, he was re-admitted the next year after much controversy among the college authorities.1 In 1719 his friend, Lord William Powlett, having made him a freeman of Lymington in 1717,2 tried unsuccessfully to put him up for that borough. Returned in 1722 for St. Ives on the Powlett interest,3 he voted with the Administration in every recorded division. In 1731 he failed to get elected as verderer of the New Forest by 1,195 votes to 2,163.4 He did not stand in 1734, and died at the beginning of 1747. On the death of his son, Thomas, in 1751, Grove Place passed to his brother-in-law Sir Richard Mill, 5th Bt..5

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Hearne, Colls. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), ii. 82-83, 91.
• 2. Edw. King, Old Times Revisited, Lymington, Hants, 193.
• 3. S. Burrard, Annals of Walhampton, 29-30, 34.
• 4. Gent. Mag. 1731, p. 217.
• 5. VCH Hants, iii. 434-5.