Knight Families of Farnham
I was recently asked for some help tracing members of the Knight family who lived in Farnham in the 18th and 19th centuries. Like most people interested in Farnham history, I was vaguely aware of the Knight family who owned a bank in Castle Street and involved in the earlier history of motor cars. Farnham was such a small town in the 1700’s and 1800’s that I thought ‘how hard can it be’? Well – it turned into a knightmare (pun intended)! Between 1539 (when Farnham Parish Registers began) and 1900 (the cut-off date for my research) a total of 504 Knight baptisms took place in Farnham according to the England Select Births and Christenings 1538-1975 Record Set.
I searched through wills and last testaments, apprenticeship records, land tax and jury qualification records, court case records, listed buildings and village histories, Hampshire and Surrey Archives and so on. I then cross-referenced with Knight parish records from Farnham Parish Church (remember Hale, Badshot, The Bourne, and Wrecclesham had no church before the 1840’s so those Knights were listed in Farnham Registers). I was able to identify clusters of Knight families in Farnham and I am going to start with the family of a certain Nicholas Knight of Farnham with origins in Long Sutton and Binsted.
Nicholas Knight – Goldsmith of The Borough, Farnham
Binsted and Long Sutton were adjacent rural parishes just across the Hampshire border west of Farnham and the Knight family were yeomen who ran various farms found in the small villages scattered around the parishes. They often owned smaller farms which they leased to tenants. Only the eldest son inherited the two main Knight domiciles – Groveland in Binsted and Well in Long Sutton. Younger sons had to find themselves farms of their own – in Froyle and Headley, for example. Sometimes this was done with money left to them in their father’s wills, or through a fortuitous marriage – or perhaps a combination of the both.
Nicholas Knight was baptised in Long Sutton Church, Hampshire in 1649, the son of Nicholas Knight and his wife Elizabeth (last name unknown), a farming family on the cusp of moving up into the ranks of the minor gentry. The Hampshire Archives have a number of documents showing property acquisition by the Knights of Long Sutton. Nicholas the Elder had sufficient funds to set his younger son up in an apprenticeship and in 1664, Nicholas, at age 15, travelled to the parish of St Dunstan in the West in the City of London and was ‘bound’ to Robert Welsted’, a goldsmith to learn both the trade and the business.
According to the Society of Jewelry Historians, Robert Welsted specialised in producing rings and small items of jewellery. He married a woman from Long Sutton, obviously through his connection with the Knight family as he originally came from Hertfordshire, and was actually buried in Long Sutton. Records show that Robert Welsted trained up many apprentices and was an established London goldsmith.
Of Nicholas Knight, Goldsmith with a shop in The Borough, Farnham, very little is known about his goldsmith trade. He must have made his money through the retailing of gold products rather than making them as I cannot find a hallmark to match him.
- 1671 – Nicholas Knight finished his apprenticeship with Goldsmith Welsted and could now set up business for himself
- 1681 – married Mary Brothers in Alton; Mary was born in Luton and the family was listed as ‘Brothers or Knight’ in the Luton records, so she was baptised as ‘Mary, daughter of ‘Thomas Brothers or Knight’!
- 1671 – Nicholas’s older brother John Knight, Yeoman of Well, Long Sutton, purchased Westcourt Manor in Binsted; when John died in 1686, the property was left to ‘Nicholas Knight junior of Groveland, Binsted, gent’. Nicholas sold it in 1692.
- 1690 – Nicholas was operating his Farnham business and decided to purchase a country estate in Binsted called Groveland.
- Between 1694 and 1699, Nicholas and Mary had three children baptised in Binsted Church and Nicholas was referred to as ‘Mr. Nicholas Knight’.
- 1699 – Court Case: Defendants: Nicholas Knight and Mary Knight his wife. Subject: property in Farnham, Surrey (outcome unknown).
- 1700 – Nicholas Knight Senior died at his daughter’s house in Binsted where he had been living for some years, being elderly and infirm. In his Will, he stated that his son, Nicholas, had provided an annuity for his support in old age. Mary Knight (daughter of Nicholas Senior and sister of Nicholas the Goldsmith) had married William Kitchener, a Binsted Yeoman. Biographies of Lord Henry Horatio Kitchener state that he descended from Mary and William Kitchener of Binsted!
- Three months later, Nicholas Knight and was buried in Farnham Parish Church on 14 December 1715, with the record referring to him as ‘Mr Nicholas Knight’ indicating his status as a member of the gentry. Mary Knight lived on until 1727 and was buried in Farnham as ‘Mary Knight widow’.
Will of Nicholas Knight
The trail goes cold following the deaths of Nicholas Knight and Mary Knight; baptism records exist for the children of a Francis Knight (not a ‘Mr’) in Farnham in the 1720’s but it is impossible to determine if this Francis was the son of Nicholas. Nicholas’s daughter, Mary, inherited the property in The Borough and if she married then it would have passed to her husband and out of the Knight family’s hands. Alternatively, she may have sold it and used the proceeds to support herself.
Conclusion: it would be impossible to trace descent from Nicholas Knight, Goldsmith of Farnham.
Grove Land, Binsted Parish
“A Grade II Listed House: for some time 2 cottages. C16, 1687, early C19, and C20. Brick and tile. Timber-framed house with later cladding of red brickwork”(historicengland.org.uk). Nicholas Knight the Elder acquired the property in 1686 upon the death of his brother John Knight, so the 1687 date in the listing for when work was done on the house, fits. We must remember that the house was in the Knight family since at least the 1500’s. By 1736, Grove Land (with 6 acres) was the property of Samuel Wright, Woollen Draper of Farnham who, presumably, acquired it from the Knight family. In 1739, Samuel Wright died, and the property passed to his daughter, Elizabeth, wife of Samuel Turner, a London merchant. We have no need of further information on the ownership of Grove Land.
Select Sources
- Hampshire Archives and Local Studies; Winchester, England, UK; Probate Records: Wills, Inventories and Administrations Proved in the Church Courts of Winchester
- Hampshire Archives and Local Studies; Winchester, England, UK; Anglican Parish Registers
- Exploring Surrey’s Past
- ancestry.com (subscription needed)
- Google books, maps, and images