William Knight

“ No persuasion could induce the handsome William to continue in the career he had embraced, the career of chivalry and arms. His uncle, Peter the Hermit, may have had considerable influence over him, and his change of profession was by no means unprofitable, for the once horse-loving William became Archbishop of Bourges: and he defended the rights of his Church against kings and councils with as much boldness, zeal, and gallantry, as any knight could have exhibited against the stoutest of assailants. ”

“ William’s determination is as sure as Harold’s. The difference is that his cause is just. After the arrival at Hastings, the story continues more slowly to its appointed end. That other side of military life is now shown, as necessary as, if less dignified than, the former glimpses. We see the victualling of William’s army. In 47 the soldiers are seizing the neighbouring cattle for food. In 48 is a knight on horseback bearing the name Wadard. He is thought by the designer to be well enough known to need no explanation, but at this distance of time his appearance seems irrelevant. ”

“ But Rufus was nothing of a knight in his bearing toward ladies. His taste with regard to the fair sex was of the worst sort; and the court of this royal and reprobate bachelor was a reproach at once to kingship and knighthood, to Christianity and civilization. He had been accused, or rather the knights of his time and country, with having introduced into England the practice of a crime of which the real introducer, according to others, was that Prince William who was drowned so fortunately for England, on the sea between Calais and Dover. ”

“ This was expected of him by his very unreasonable relatives, who bound him apprentice to the city knight, Sir William Rawlings, a then fashionable upholsterer in Moorfields. The boy was dull as the mahogany he had to polish, and the knight could never make him half so bright in business matters. “Tom Dibdin,” thus used to remark the city cavalier—“Tom Dibdin is the stupidest hound on earth!” The knight, however, changed his mind when his apprentice, grown up to man’s estate, produced “The Cabinet.” Sir William probably thought that the opera was the upholstery business set to music. ”

“ In his ‘Brief Supplement’ Tony Aston disparages Underhill, saying that he knows Underhill was much cried up in his time, but he (Aston) is so stupid as not to know why. Underhill was, he says, ‘about fifty years of age the latter end of King William's reign, about six foot high, long and broad faced,’ and something inclined to corpulence. ”

“ Sir John Harper was the only knight who forgot chivalrous courtesy, and who allowed his squire in armor to insult Sir Jeffrey. But this was not done with impunity. That knight appealed to usage, compelled his assailant to dismount, drop his colors, walk six times round the hustings, and humbly ask pardon.
Sir William Swallowtail, mentioned above, “was one William [Pg 443] Cock, a whimsical basket-maker of Brentford, who, deeming it proper to have an equipage every way suitable to the honor he aspired to, built his own carriage, with his own hands, to his own taste. ”

“ Lectures on prophecies concerning Antichrist 1855; Psalms and hymns 1862; The arch of Titus and the spoils of the Temple 1867. d. 5 Wetherill place, Grosvenor place, Clifton 5 Aug. 1878.
KNIGHT, William Henry (son of John Knight of Newbury, Berkshire, schoolmaster) . b. Newbury 26 Sep. 1823; in a solicitor’s office at Newbury; painter in London from 1844, studied at British museum and R. Academy; exhibited 29 pictures at R.A., 17 at B.I. and 8 at Suffolk st. 1844–64; his best known work is The broken window. d. Claremont cottage, Claremont place, Wandsworth road, Surrey 31 July 1863. ”

“ In 1495 Knight went up to the court, where Henry VII is said to have made him one of his secretaries. He was frequently employed as an ambassador in the reign of Henry VIII. On 3 June 1512 he went with Sir Edward Howard to Spain, and, after many dangers from storms and sickness, reached Valladolid 18 Feb. ”

“ What a miserable exception to the comfort of the rest of the English people does it appear when we see a beggar in the streets without stockings! We consider such a person to be in the lowest stage of want and suffering. Two centuries ago, not one person in a thousand wore stockings;—one century ago, not one person in five hundred wore them;—now, not one person in a thousand is without them. Who made this great change in the condition of the people of England, and, indeed, of the people of almost all civilized countries? William Lee—who died at Paris of a broken heart. ”

“ Build a tram-road, or rail-road. Nobody, however, but a very fast man would risk his good sense by seriously advising a rail-road. Solid men would certainly shun him. A tram-road was a better understood thing. The collieries had used small pieces of them for years. A tram-road then. Business men put their heads together and began earnestly to talk of a tram-road.
William James, a rich and enterprising man, entered heartily into the project, and undertook to make surveys for a suitable route. And not long after a party of surveyors was seen in the fields near Liverpool. ”

“ I trust to taste of truest Thisby's sight.
But stay, O spite!
But mark, poor knight,284
What dreadful dole is here!
Eyes, do you see?
How can it be?
O dainty duck! O dear!288
Thy mantle good,
What! stain'd with blood!
Approach, ye Furies fell!
O Fates, come, come,
Cut thread and thrum;
Quail, crush, conclude, and quell!294
The. ”

“ Speech of Dr. Phillimore on the Catholic Question. Motion on the Appointment of Mr. Henry W. Wynn. Conduct of Mr. Robert Peel. Libels. Anti-Catholicism in Wales. Ball for the Relief of the Irish. Projected Visit of the King to Scotland pp. 301-344
CHAPTER IX.
[1822.]
Sir William Knighton appointed Keeper of the King's Privy Purse. His Sense of Duty sometimes opposed to the King's Instructions. His important Services in lessening the Royal Expenditure. Arrests in Ireland. Canning and Peel. Lamentable Death of the Marquis of Londonderry. Estimate of this Distinguished Statesman. ”

“ Richard Payne Knight [q. v.] the numismatist was Thomas Andrew Knight's elder brother. Knight was educated at Ludlow grammar school, at a school at Chiswick, and at Balliol College, Oxford, where he matriculated on 13 Feb. 1778. He was early distinguished as an eager sportsman, a good shot, and a keen observer. He settled at Elton, near Downton Castle, Herefordshire, his brother's residence, and began there his experiments in raising new varieties of fruits and vegetables. ”

“ His ambition was ennobled by the greatness and justice of the cause to which it was attached—the cause of religious liberty and of the balance of power in Europe. Never did man make a vast political design more exclusively the thought and purpose of his life than William did. The work which he accomplished on the field or in the cabinet was his passion; his own aggrandizement was but the means to that end. Whatever were his views on the crown of England, he never attempted to realize them by violence and disorder. ”

“ John Knight was paymaster of a battalion of the King’s German Legion from 1814 to 1816. He was with his battalion at the battle of Waterloo, and after the campaign he married the beautiful (and wealthy) daughter of the banker through whom he drew the pay at Brussels. The marriage brought him into contact with large financial interests on the Continent, and he settled at Antwerp as a banker; and there he made the acquaintance of Wappers. I remember Wappers very well. In his later years he lived in Paris, and I used to go to his house there. ”

“ His son by his first wife, John Prescott Knight, the portrait-painter, is separately noticed.
Knight was a shy, careful, benevolent, and retiring man, who shrank from social intimacies, and was wholly domestic in habits. His figure was small and pliable, his height being five feet two, his hair and eyes dark, his voice shrill, but not unmusical. He sang well and made up well, and in various lines of pert servants was unequalled. The ‘Mirror of the Stage’ calls him a very natural actor. ”

“ His father was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, which, as chairman of committee, he reported to Congress on July 4 of 1776. After his father's death William joined the army which Wayne was leading against the northwestern Indians, and showed great gallantry at the battle on the Miami in 1794. He left the army in 1798. He represented the Northwest Territory as a delegate in Congress in 1799-1800, and succeeded in passing an important law relating to the sale of the Federal land in small parcels ”

“ Shortly after his arrival he married and began to make for himself a home in the township of Pakenham, in Lanark county. Things succeeding, he commenced the manufacture of square timber, and after a while became a successful lumber manufacturer and exporter. He lived and died in the township in which he first settled. William received his education at the Perth Grammar School, Ontario, at Bishop’s College, Lennoxville, Quebec, and pursued his medical studies at McGill College, Montreal, where he graduated. ”

“ As Colonel in Command he raised the 171st Battalion, which he took over to England in 1916, continuing his services with the army as one of the officers of a Railway Construction Battalion in France, after the 171st had been absorbed in other battalions, in terms of what is known as the Territorial System. No citizen of Quebec has earned higher credit for patriotic effort than Sir William. ”

“ As he grew up he excelled the youth of his own age in manly exercises; could thrash all of his own size, when insulted, but never played the tyrant, or the bully. He could make the longest innings at cricket, and as for swimming in all its various branches, none could compare with William. It was finally arranged by a merchant to send William a voyage to Newfoundland, and the news soon spread round the town that William (for he was a general favourite) was to see the world by taking to the sea. ”

“ It was truly tragic that his doom should have come at the moment when he had once more drawn together a great alliance in Europe, and when he possessed a popularity in England such as he had never before enjoyed.
In viewing William’s character as a whole one is struck by its entire absence of ostentation, a circumstance which reveals his mind and policy more clearly than would otherwise be the case. No one can doubt his real belief in religion in spite of many moral failings or weaknesses. ”

“ The marble nymph was silent in her green gloom, only the water dripping, dripping eternally from her jar, and a white cloud veiling the moon.
He that is without sin among you—
They were together until the faint gold rim showed beyond the sea and the mountain rose coldly white against the dawn. The revellers were still pushing the money frantically about when they returned, but Sir William had vanished, exhausted, and the air of the great room was foul and close. ”

“ William had been in his early days one of those intolerable nuisances, an infant prodigy, and at eight years old exhibited that ripeness of judgment and energy of action for which the birch is in our opinion the best remedy. He had quelled a disturbance in his own court, when very young; but a beadle in our own day can do as much as this, for a disturbance in a court is often quelled by that very humble officer. His marriage with Matilda, daughter of the Earl of Flanders, gave him the benefit of respectable connection, so useful to a young man starting in life ”

“ With us poor folks, wishing is one thing, and doing is quite another, Sir Knight; but what then? we can only try our best. Well then, as I plodded on, I turned over the scheme in my head. I was loath to leave our own dear nook, and it made me shudder to think, in the din and brawls of the town, 'So it is here we shall soon live, or in some place nearly as bad!' Yet I never murmured against our good God, but rather thanked Him in secret for His last blessing; nor can I say that I met with anything extraordinary in the forest, either coming or going ”

“ I am sensible of the peril in which I stand. But I am no Facing-Both-Ways. I hold by my conscience, i' faith."
"Sir," he rapped out, harsh and sudden, "I have laid you by the heels within the precincts of the compter once, and there I will lay you again, if you brandish your impudence before me."
"In the which case, my lord," quoth I, coldly, "you will be nothing bettered, and King William would have a loyal servant to avenge." ”

“ KNIGHT, JOSEPH (1829–1907) , dramatic critic, born at Leeds on 24 May 1829, was elder son of Joseph Knight, cloth merchant, who was a native of Carlisle. His mother, Marianne daughter of Joseph Wheelwright, became blind in middle life but lived to the age of seventy-three. Educated at a private boarding school, Bramham College, near Tadcaster, Knight early showed a taste for poetry and rose to be head of the school. ”

“ The music from the robins in the orchard filled my ears; soft winds stirred the lace on Sir William's cuffs and collarette.
Presently he roused, shaking the dream from his eyes; and, watching him, it seemed to me I could see the very tide of life swelling flesh and muscle into new vigour. The colour came back into his face and hands; the light grew in his eyes.
"Come!" he said, in a voice that had lost its tremour. "Life has but one meaning—to go on, ever on, lad! 'Tis a long doze awaits us at the journey's end." ”

“ He was born in 1651, being a scion of the early days of the Puritan colony. He came of a highly prolific pioneer family,—he had twenty brothers and five sisters,—yet none but himself of this extensive family are heard of in history or biography. Genius is too rare a quality to be spread through such a flock. His father was a gunsmith. Of the children, William was one of the youngest. After his father's death, he helped his mother at sheep-keeping in the wilderness till he was eighteen years of age, then there came "an unaccountable impulse upon his mind that he was born to greater matters." ”