Rep. pt. ii. App. p. 382; Luttrell, Diary, September 1691). In the following year Knight was chosen to represent the city in parliament. The only occasion on which he took a prominent part in the house was in 1694, when, speaking with ability, though with great virulence, against the proposal for naturalising foreign protestants in England, he wound up a violent tirade with a proposal ‘that the serjeant be commanded to open the doors, and let us first kick the Bill out of the house, and then all foreigners out of the kingdom.’ The speech was shortly afterwards printed with a preface in which it was said that ‘if other corporations and shires would take the like care as Bristol, they might be happy in their representatives; and then, and never till then, may we hope to see poor England become Old England again, rich and happy at home, glorious and renowned abroad.’ The speech produced an extraordinary effect, and although, in deference to the indignation of the house, which ordered a copy of the printed speech to be burnt, Knight thought proper to disclaim any connection with the publication, his persecution, as it was considered, only served to render him more popular. ‘The people,’ says Macpherson, ‘were inflamed to a degree of madness; as for Sir John Knight, he was discoursed of as a saviour, and in a manner adored, for having made so noble a stand in behalf of his country.’ The government had to drop the bill. Hazlitt includes Knight's speech against the Dutch in his ‘British Eloquence’ (i. 226), and admits a preference for the speaker's ‘downright passion, unconquerable prejudice, and unaffected enthusiasm over the studied eloquence of modern invective.’
At the very time that he delivered this speech, however, Knight was in correspondence with St. Germains, and engaged in a scheme for restoring James by the aid of French arms. On 18 March 1696, after the discovery of the assassination plot, he was arrested as a suspected Jacobite, but no definite charge being brought against him, he was bailed on 30 June, and set at liberty on 5 Sept. following. Having lost his seat at Bristol in the previous year, Knight henceforth lived in obscurity. Falling into poverty he gave much offence in Bristol by threatening to sue the corporation for his ‘wages as a Parliament man,’ but finally retired to Congresbury in Somerset, where he had a small estate. In October 1713 his daughter, Anne, set forth her ‘deplorable estate’ in a petition to the town council, and was granted 20l. In December 1717 Sir John himself made a similar appeal, asserting that he was reduced to great necessity and want by the unnatural treatment of his son, and praying for charitable assistance. Only 20l. was voted. The Merchants' Company had a few weeks previously granted Sir John an annuity of 20l., but he did not live to enjoy it. He died at an advanced age in the following February 1718 (Hist. Reg. ii. 6). Macaulay calls Knight a ‘coarse-minded and spiteful Jacobite,’ and speaks of ‘his impudent and savage nature.’ There is, however, no specific evidence in support of these charges. His brother-Jacobite, Roger North, contrasts him with his kinsman, Sir John the elder, and describes him as ‘a gentleman of as eminent integrity and loyalty as ever the city of Bristol was honoured with’ (Examen, p. 253).
A third John Knight (fl. 1670), also of Bristol, was apparently no relation of his namesakes. He was at first in opposition to the dominant or royalist party in Bristol, and was in 1663 fined 400l. for refusing to become a member of the common council on election. He shortly afterwards became a convert to royalist views, and was elected mayor of Bristol in 1670, but his conversion did not prevent him from being denounced as a fanatic by Sir John Knight ‘the elder’ in the same year. He was summoned to London, and appeared before the privy council, but was cleared of all charges brought against him, returned home without delay, and ‘was honourably brought into Bristoll with 235 horse.’
[Garrard's Edward Colston, passim; Parl. Hist. v. 850; Addit. MS. 5540, ff. 8, 27; Somers Tracts, iv. 272; Luttrell's Diary, passim; Macpherson's History, ii. 52; Macaulay's History; information kindly supplied by Mr. William George, Bristol; authorities cited for Sir John Knight the elder; J. Latimer's Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, in course of publication in the Bristol Mercury.]
KNIGHT, Sir JOHN (1748?–1831), admiral, son of Rear-admiral John Knight (d. 1788), was born at Dundee about 1748. He entered the navy in 1758, on board the Tartar frigate, commanded by his father, in the expedition against St. Malo and Cherbourg under Lord Howe. After the peace of 1763 he served in the Romney, carrying the flag of Lord Colville as commander-in-chief on the coast of North America. He was promoted to be lieutenant on 25 May 1770, and in 1775 went out to North America as second lieutenant of the Falcon sloop with Captain John Linzee, arriving there three days before the skirmish at Lexington. The Falcon was one of the vessels that covered the attack on Bunker's Hill. In the early part of the following year, in attempting to destroy a
